A way to prevent nvim-tree buffers in shada

[litoj]

I would like to unclutter my history from all the /path/to/cwd/NvimTree_1 files, that never existed, but neovim still saves those paths in my shada, therefore lowering my history of actual files.

Unfortunately, from what I know, it is not possible to use vim.o.shada = 'r:.*/NvimTree_1'.

Is there a way to change it to something more like terminal notation, that can be caught by shada pattern? (term:...)

[alex-courtis]

That is indeed a problem I was not aware of.

:; cat m.shada | grep -E "^[^ ]" | sed -E 's/with timestamp.*//g' | sort | uniq -c
    912 Change
     12 Global mark
      1 Header
   9317 History entry
    100 Jump
    155 Local mark
     37 Register
      1 Replacement string
      2 Search pattern

It's no so bad:

:; cat m.shada | grep NvimTree_1 | wc -l
271
:; cat m.shada | grep fugitive | wc -l
31
:; cat m.shada | grep --no-group-separator -B 2 NvimTree_1 | grep -E "^[^ ]" | sed -E 's/with timestamp.*//g' | sort | uniq -c
213 Change
25 Jump
32 Local mark

[alex-courtis]

I'm not well versed in shada and can't see any doc around the pattern.

It seems that notation like fugitive:// isn't automagically applied.

I'm open to any and all ideas...

[litoj]

it is not automatic, but any prefixes can be filtered by vim.opt.shada:append("r<prefix>"), so if the name of NvimTree was also in some prefix notation, it would allow for users to fix the issue.

[alex-courtis]

I see. It works for vim.opt.shada:append("rfugitive://") but not the example from the help vim.opt.shada:append("r/tmp")

An nvim-tree:// or similar prefix would work.

We use the name NvimTree_<tabpage> however that could be changed to something like nvim-tree://NvimTree_<tabpage>. We cannot break users who match NvimTree_<tabpage> in their own plugins and scripts.

I'm happy to make such a change but we need to thoroughly test it first. Are you willing to change this?

[litoj]

I am unsure what change are you referring to, but sure. I would like to help in any way possible.

[alex-courtis]

Fantastic. What change are you unsure of?

[litoj]

Well, what you meant by 'willing to change this', but I assume a PR with the adapted code was it.

[alex-courtis]

Yes please: CONTRIBUTING.md

wiki: Development

[hinell]

Few options that come into my mind:

• forcibly close all NvimTree windows just before exiting nvim
• provide full paths to the shada+=r/path/to/NvimTree_N just before exiting nvim
• open a tracking issue in upstream nvim repo to requestion feature to exclude non-writable buffers' with fake files from shada

[litoj]

There are multiple issues opened and set as backlog in the repo, so I think the way shada works won't change any time soon.

I haven't thought about the way of adding extra paths to shada before write, that is very clever and solves the issue perfectly. I ended up with code like this:

vim.api.create_autocmd('VimLeavePre', {callback = function()
	local filter = { vim.o.shada }
	for _, v in ipairs(vim.v.oldfiles) do
		if v:find('.git/', 7, true) or v:match 'NvimTree_%d+$' or not vim.loop.fs_stat(v) then
			filter[#filter + 1] = v
		end
	end
	vim.o.shada = table.concat(filter, ',r')
end})

-- in config: 'wipeout' doesn't add windows to the 'jumps' list
vim.keymap.set('n', 'q', vim.cmd.bwipeout, {buffer = true})

Thank you so much for the idea!

[hinell]

I've actually came up with a bit more efficient approach. It excludes every NvimTree_N path from :oldfiles list:

M = {}
M.shada_exclude = {}
vim.api.nvim_create_augroup("NvimTreeBufferLocal", { clear = true })
vim.api.nvim_create_autocmd({
	"FileType"
},{
	pattern  = "NvimTree_*",
	group    = "NvimTreeBufferLocal",
	callback = function()

		local bufName    = vim.api.nvim_buf_get_name(auEvent.buf)
		if not M.shada_exclude[tabCurrent] then
			M.shada_exclude[tabCurrent] = bufName
			vim.opt.shada:append("r" .. bufName)
		end

	end
})

return M

[hinell]

Calling vim.loop.fs_stat(v) is huge overkill as there are hundreds of files.

[litoj]

I absolutely agree testing file existence is overkill, for nvimtree the regex suffices. I think your solution would have to be altered slightly to exclude every nvimtree window per cwd. The cwd is the main hurdle. The tabs can be safely ignored altogether because shada matches by prefix, not full path.