Dubs Vim — Project Tray

A simple wrapper around the Project plugin.

Additional features:

Toggle the project tray easily with <Alt-Shift-4>. (The key combo was chosen to integrate nicely with Dubs Vim.)
Put your .vimprojects file anywhere in your Vim folder and it'll be located.
Watch window sizes be fixed after hiding the tray.
Enjoy a few small usability tweaks to the original Project plugin.

Installation

Installation is easy using the packages feature (see :help packages).

To install the package so that it will automatically load on Vim startup, use a start directory, e.g.,

mkdir -p ~/.vim/pack/landonb/start
cd ~/.vim/pack/landonb/start

If you want to test the package first, make it optional instead (see :help pack-add):

mkdir -p ~/.vim/pack/landonb/opt
cd ~/.vim/pack/landonb/opt

Clone the project to the desired path:

git clone https://github.com/landonb/dubs_project_tray.git

If you installed to the optional path, tell Vim to load the package:

:packadd! dubs_project_tray

Just once, tell Vim to build the online help:

:Helptags

Then whenever you want to reference the help from Vim, run:

:help dubs-project-tray

Usage

Type <Shift-Alt-4> once to open the project tray. Type again to close the project tray. Repeat.

This project includes a starter .vimprojects file. When you open the project tray, you'll see some comments at the top of the file. Read them.

tl;dr, in command mode, type \c and answer two questions -- give your new project a name, and then enter its absolute path -- and project will create a new project for you.

Hints: If you have two or more projects and would like to reorder them, rather than selecting, copying and pasting, there's an easier way. First, collapse all directories by typing zM, and then move the cursor on to the same line as the collapsed project you want to move. Finally, type <Ctrl-Up> and <Ctrl-Down> to swap the whole project with the line above or the line below; press the key combo multiple times to move the project to a new position.

Key Mappings

Key Mapping	Description	Notes
`Shift-Alt-4`	Toggle Project tray	As mentioned above, `Shift-Alt-4` toggles the project tray. You can browse or search the project tray and double-click or press <enter> in command mode (not insert mode) to open files. Be sure you've edited `~/.vim/.vimprojects` and setup the project hierarchies (read the instructions at the top of the file; basically, use `\c` to add a new project).

Brackets in Directory Names

Bug: There's an issue handling directories with brackets in their names, such as those used in a cookiecutter which uses the Jinja template engine which uses brackets, e.g., cc-pyproject/{{project_name}}.

Specifically, folding doesn't work well. If the fold name is shorter than the project window width, e.g.,

ex={{example}} {

then the built-in za command works (which toggles folding), albeit not until after typing it at least three times. But if the name is wider than the project window, e.g.,

long_{{example}}={{exammmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmple}} {

so the text is clipped by the Vim window, using za changes the name of the fold, e.g., from

long_{{example}}={{exammmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmple}} {

long_{example}}------

(with leading spaces, too) but doesn't collapse the directory listing.

I wouldn't normally note a bug in a readme but this problem seems inherent to Vim and is something I'll probably never fix.