/neovim-remote

Support for --remote and friends.

Primary LanguagePythonMIT LicenseMIT

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Intro

nvr is a tool that helps controlling nvim processes.

It basically does two things:

  1. adds back the --remote family of options (see man vim)
  2. helps controlling the current nvim from within :terminal

To target a certain nvim process, you either use the --servername option or set the environment variable $NVIM_LISTEN_ADDRESS.

Since $NVIM_LISTEN_ADDRESS is implicitely set by each nvim process, you can call nvr from within Neovim (:terminal) without specifying --servername.

Installation

$ pip3 install neovim-remote

FAQ

How to open directories?

:e /tmp opens a directory view via netrw. Netrw works by hooking into certain events, BufEnter in this case (see :au FileExplorer for all of them).

Unfortunately Neovim's API doesn't trigger any autocmds on its own, so simply nvr /tmp won't work. Meanwhile you can work around it like this:

$ nvr /tmp -c 'doau BufEnter'

Examples

In one window, create the server process:

$ NVIM_LISTEN_ADDRESS=/tmp/nvimsocket nvim

In another window do this:

$ # Spares us from using --servername all the time:
$ export NVIM_LISTEN_ADDRESS=/tmp/nvimsocket
$ # Open 2 files in the server:
$ nvr --remote file1 --remote file2
$ # Send keys to the current buffer of the server:
$ # Enter insert mode, enter 'abc', and go back to normal mode again:
$ nvr --remote-send 'iabc<esc>'
$ # Evaluate any VimL expression.
$ # Get all listed buffers:
$ nvr --remote-expr "join(sort(map(filter(range(bufnr('$')), 'buflisted(v:val)'), 'bufname(v:val)')), "\""\n"\"")"
.config/git/config
vim/vimrc
zsh/.zprofile

See nvr -h for all options.

Demos

(Click the GIFs to watch them full-size.)

Using nvr from a different window (another tmux pane in this case): Demo 1

Using nvr from within Neovim: Demo 2