Dependencies

[viperML]

How should a user express the dependencies between two plugins?

Let's say we have two plugins A and B:

• A is only explicitely required for ACommand
• B is only required for filetypes .b, but requires A to be loaded before

I believe we can use require('lz.n').trigger_load("a") in the before function of B?

[mrcjkb]

Hey 👋

If a dependency is simply a Lua library (that doesn't source any plugin scripts), then I would recommend just to add it to the runtimepath (or the package.path).
It won't have any noticeable impact on startup time.

Otherwise, you can use the before hook.
Although I consider designing plugins in a way that users need to worry about loading/configuration order an anti pattern.

[mrcjkb]

I think making trigger_load idempotent would be a good idea.

Created an issue: #51

[mrcjkb]

I've put some more thought into this. See #51 (comment).

trigger_load should not be called from within a plugin spec's hook (I'll update the docs on that).

What if I have two plugins B and C, that depend on A? Using trigger_load on the after/before of B and C is not correct, as you might trigger A twice.

@viperML do you have a concrete example for this that cannot be solved by bundling configurations of plugins and their extensions?

[viperML]

@viperML do you have a concrete example for this that cannot be solved by bundling configurations of plugins and their extensions?

Admittedly, all the situations I've run into, the dependency doesn't have any /plugin folder, so I can just use start instead of opt+packadd. For my case, these dependencies were orgmode+org-bullets, dap+dap-python and telescope+telescope-fzf-native.

The only sitation I've run into for now is nvim-paredit. I want to be on ft = {"scheme"}, but it does a require on nvim-tresitter, which I have on event = "DeferredUIEnter". When opening a scheme file, nvim-paredit triggers before the DeferredUIEnter, causing a require error. I may be able to work around this by adding nvim-treesitter to my package.path.

-- Note that while I've had a neovim configuration for years, only this month I've started to move to it as my main editor, so my opinions might not reflect a user with a bit more vision of the ecosystem.

[mrcjkb]

Hmm, nvim-paredit should stop depending on nvim-treesitter and use Neovim's built-in API.
The nvim-treesitter Lua API is deprecated and will be removed.

The maintainers also recommend against lazy-loading nvim-treesitter.
But yes, in the meantime, you should be able to work around that.

[viperML]

The maintainers also recommend against lazy-loading nvim-treesitter

That I didn't know!

[mrcjkb]

I've added a section to the readme on plugin dependencies.

[BirdeeHub]

A custom handler that loads a plugin right before load of another plugin

For the reasons above, this is rarely useful, but it CAN exist, here it is.

Useage:

Put the below handler in a file in your config.

At the start of your config run:

require('lze').register_handler(require("that.file"))

In a spec:

dep_of = { "plugin", "names", "that", "depend", "on", "the", "spec", "this", "is", "in" }

local trigger_load = require("lz.n").trigger_load
local states = require("lz.n.handler.state").new()
---@type table<string, true>
local called = {}

---@type lz.n.Handler
---@diagnostic disable-next-line: missing-fields
local M = {
    spec_field = "dep_of",
    lookup = states.lookup_plugin
}

---@param plugin lz.n.Plugin
function M.add(plugin)
    local dep_of = plugin.dep_of

    ---@type string[]
    local needed_by = {}
    if type(dep_of) == "table" then
        ---@cast dep_of string[]
        needed_by = dep_of
    elseif type(dep_of) == "string" then
        needed_by = { dep_of }
    else
        return
    end
    for _, name in ipairs(needed_by) do
        if called[name] == true then
            trigger_load(plugin)
            return
        end
    end
    for _, name in ipairs(needed_by) do
        states.insert(name, plugin)
    end
end

---@param pname string
function M.del(pname)
    states.del(pname)
    called[pname] = true
    if states.has_pending_plugins(pname) then
        states.each_pending(pname,
            function (p)
                states.del(p.name)
                trigger_load(p)
            end
        )
    end
end

return M

[BirdeeHub]

Whenever I figure out how to PR to it I'll add it haha I dont know how, its not its own repo and Ive never used a github wiki before XD

[mrcjkb]

you should be able to just edit it.

[BirdeeHub]

I dont see an edit button anywhere XD

and I can clone the repo but it has no repo page so I cant fork it? If I can from the cli I failed to do so because I couldnt figure it out in lazygit. And my fork that my PRs have been from doesnt have a wiki

[BirdeeHub]

https://github.com/nvim-neorocks/lz.n/wiki/Custom-handler-examples#dependency-handler

Added it :)

[mrcjkb]

thanks.
One minor thing: I would suggest renaming the dep_of field to something like load_before.
"dep_of" implies that a plugin is a dependency of other plugins. luasnip isn't really a dependency of nvim-cmp.