Updates of ‘mini.files’: file preview

Also prefix customization, change target window, and more

Originally posted on Reddit

Explorer with preview

Hello, Neovim users!

Around two weeks ago I’ve announced the release of mini.files - a file explorer module of mini.nvim with column view navigation and “edit text to manipulate file system” design. This resulted into a great feedback from the community, much of which turned into new features.

I don’t really do a follow up post with plugin updates, as it is usually fairly complete before release. This time is an exception.

Here is a list of new additions to ‘mini.files’:

• File preview (with highlighting): set windows.preview = true and navigate over file. Initially I was skeptical about adding this due to code design. However, having preview visible for directories and not visible for files resulted into some uncomfortable behavior during deeply nested exploration, so I changed my mind. Big thanks to /u/folke for the help on how to efficiently add text highlighting in file previews!

• Customizable preview width via windows.width_preview. Following previous change, this seemed necessary for a better file preview.

• Prefix (icon) customization via content.prefix, including no icons at all (see examples in help). Again, initially skeptical about adding due to code design, but I figured out a way to make even a better choices to enable customizable prefix.

• Non-permanent delete via options.permanent_delete = false. This is a module-specific “move to trash” approach which will move file/directory into ‘mini.files/trash’ directory of ‘data’ standard path. Didn’t use regular trash mostly due to it being OS dependent.

• Ability to set new target window from inside explorer. Here is an example of creating mappings for vertical/horizontal split of target window (should be followed by explicit file open afterwards).

• Events after successful file system action (see this list). This was one of the first questions/requests I’ve got after the release, as it makes possible to utilize didCreateFiles/didRenameFiles/didDeleteFiles LSP notifications.

• Various small tweaks, like support [count] for go_in/go_out keys, make non-delete file system actions to never override existing data, etc.

And that’s about it. ‘mini.files’ will still be in beta-testing for a while until ‘mini.nvim’ 0.10.0 release, but I consider its features to be mostly complete.

If you didn’t try it yet, give it a shot and tell me what you think! Either here in comments or in a (already pretty crowded, though) dedicated beta-testing issue. Thanks!