lucc/nvimpager

Monitor file for changes

Closed this issue · 8 comments

plurry commented

Is there a way to use nvimpager like less +F or tail -f (or tail -F ideally) to watch log files as they grow?

lucc commented

Such a thing is currently not implemented and not possible. There are some notes about this limitation in the readme under "todo".

Notes for the future

  • I think a good implementation of a tail -f like functionality should work for equally across real files and pipes.
  • It would be nice to stream from stdin directly to the nvim instance in nvimpager. This might be dependent on the upstream nvim issues linked in the readme.
  • How well does nvim's reaload functionality work with keeping the cursor position?
lucc commented

The same is discussed for vimpager: rkitover/vimpager#247

That issue links to an interesting SO answer:
https://unix.stackexchange.com/a/417939/88313

It might be possible to use the autoread option.

lucc commented

@plurry The following settings in the nvimpager init file might work but only for real files, not for pipes:

set autoread
au CursorHold * checktime
plurry commented

I quickly tried that just now and it didn't seem to work. Anyway, it's not critical for me. I just wanted to make sure I didn't miss some obvious option somewhere.

Thanks. Feel free to close if you'd like.

lucc commented

You might have to set updatetime to a lower value or be more patient :)

An even better solution might be timers as they do not only fire once after the user did something:

set autoread
call timer_start(300, {id -> nvim_command("checktime")}, {"repeat": -1})
midirhee12 commented

@plurry Have you tried running nvimpager in watch or entr. I have no clue if it works, but it is probably worth a try

lucc commented

@cvoges12 The situation we are thinking about here is nvimpager waiting on some more text from a long running pipeline or a long log file that is being appended to. watch restarts the program you give it so it would restart the whole long running pipeline or open the long logfile every n seconds. That is not what one wants.

lucc commented

I have implemented a version of follow mode based on the timer + checktime solution proposed above. It does not handle input via stdin from long running commands though. That is a limitation of nvimpager in general.