Flexible session management for Neovim.
:mksession
under the hoodThis is yet another session management plugin for Neovim.
The main goal was to make session management more flexible and overall more
Lua-friendly. All other session management plugins I know
(e.g. auto-session,
persisted.nvim,
vim-obsession,
vim-startify)
use Vim's :mksession!
directly to generate Vimscript files that are later :source
d.
This works well in general, but storing user data between sessions may be problematic.
To solve this issue possession
uses JSON files to easily store session metadata.
Under the hood :mksession!
is still used, but the resulting Vimscript is stored
in the JSON file along other data.
With packer.nvim:
use {
'jedrzejboczar/possession.nvim',
requires = { 'nvim-lua/plenary.nvim' },
}
Or with other package managers/manually, but make sure plenary.nvim is installed.
Detailed documentation
See doc/possession.txt.
Quick start
Call require('possession').setup { ... }
somewhere in your init.lua
.
The default configuration is:
require('possession').setup {
session_dir = (Path:new(vim.fn.stdpath('data')) / 'possession'):absolute(),
silent = false,
load_silent = true,
debug = false,
logfile = false,
prompt_no_cr = false,
autosave = {
current = false, -- or fun(name): boolean
cwd = false, -- or fun(): boolean
tmp = false, -- or fun(): boolean
tmp_name = 'tmp', -- or fun(): string
on_load = true,
on_quit = true,
},
autoload = false, -- or 'last' or 'auto_cwd' or 'last_cwd' or fun(): string
commands = {
save = 'PossessionSave',
load = 'PossessionLoad',
save_cwd = 'PossessionSaveCwd',
load_cwd = 'PossessionLoadCwd',
rename = 'PossessionRename',
close = 'PossessionClose',
delete = 'PossessionDelete',
show = 'PossessionShow',
list = 'PossessionList',
list_cwd = 'PossessionListCwd',
migrate = 'PossessionMigrate',
},
hooks = {
before_save = function(name) return {} end,
after_save = function(name, user_data, aborted) end,
before_load = function(name, user_data) return user_data end,
after_load = function(name, user_data) end,
},
plugins = {
close_windows = {
hooks = {'before_save', 'before_load'},
preserve_layout = true, -- or fun(win): boolean
match = {
floating = true,
buftype = {},
filetype = {},
custom = false, -- or fun(win): boolean
},
},
delete_hidden_buffers = {
hooks = {
'before_load',
vim.o.sessionoptions:match('buffer') and 'before_save',
},
force = false, -- or fun(buf): boolean
},
nvim_tree = true,
neo_tree = true,
symbols_outline = true,
outline = true,
tabby = true,
dap = true,
dapui = true,
neotest = true,
delete_buffers = false,
stop_lsp_clients = false,
},
telescope = {
previewer = {
enabled = true,
previewer = 'pretty', -- or 'raw' or fun(opts): Previewer
wrap_lines = true,
include_empty_plugin_data = false,
cwd_colors = {
cwd = 'Comment',
tab_cwd = { '#cc241d', '#b16286', '#d79921', '#689d6a', '#d65d0e', '#458588' }
}
},
list = {
default_action = 'load',
mappings = {
save = { n = '<c-x>', i = '<c-x>' },
load = { n = '<c-v>', i = '<c-v>' },
delete = { n = '<c-t>', i = '<c-t>' },
rename = { n = '<c-r>', i = '<c-r>' },
},
},
},
}
To migrate existing vimscript-based sessions use the :PossessionMigrate
command.
It will try to generate session files in JSON format from given directory (or file).
The files will be stored in session_dir
so make sure to use different directories.
Session name is assumed to be the filename without extension.
The defaults command names are quite long, but shorter names can be configured:
require('possession').setup {
commands = {
save = 'SSave',
load = 'SLoad',
delete = 'SDelete',
list = 'SList',
}
}
Under the hood this plugin uses the command :mksession
which in turn uses 'sessionoptions'
to "make" the session. See :help 'sessionoptions'
for available options, some notable ones:
options
- Can mess things up, use only when you know what you're doing (Neovim has sane
default of not including this one)buffers
- While this plugin offers delete_hidden_buffers
, I'd also suggest using
set sessionoptions-=buffers
to just exclude hidden buffers when saving session.require('telescope').load_extension('possession')
Then use :Telescope possession list
or require('telescope').extensions.possession.list()
The default action will load selected session.
Alternatively, use :Telescope possession list only_cwd=true
or require('telescope').extensions.possession.list({only_cwd=true})
This will limit the displayed sessions to those related to the current working directory.
It is possible to automatically save the current session (or create a tmp or cwd session) when quitting
Neovim or loading a different session. This behavior is disabled by default, but can be enabled
using the autosave.*
configuration options. Check doc/possession.txt
for details.
When autosave.cwd
is set to true
, there are situations were the cwd session might be saved when it is not wanted,
e.g. when file arguments are passed to Neovim, and when a session is closed via :PossessionClose
(see https://github.com/jedrzejboczar/possession.nvim/issues/72 for details).
To prevent overwriting the cwd session in these cases, you can use the following setting:
autosave = {
cwd = function()
return not require('possession.session').exists(require('possession.paths').cwd_session_name())
end
}
Sessions can be auto-loaded by setting the autoload.*
config options. Check doc/possession.txt
for details.
To display the current session name in statusline/winbar/etc. you can define the following function:
local function session_name()
return require('possession.session').get_session_name() or ''
end
and use it in your statusline setup. For a lualine example see https://github.com/jedrzejboczar/possession.nvim/issues/14#issuecomment-1272353836.
Currently there is no out-of-the-box integration with any startup screen, PRs welcome. For an example configuration see https://github.com/jedrzejboczar/possession.nvim/issues/22#issuecomment-1413401663. Some general guidelines are described below.
The require('possession.query')
module provides helper functions for querying available sessions.
It can be helpful when generating a startup screen. Take a look at the helper function
workspaces_with_shortcuts
which implements all the burden of splitting sessions into workspaces
based on root directories specified by the user and will generate shortcuts for each group.
The resulting table can be used when generating a startup screen.
When using alpha-nvim there is an additional helper function that generates a layout group that can be included in the startup screen. Example usage:
local query = require('possession.query')
local workspaces = {
{
'Workspace A', -- title
'a', -- shortcuts prefix
{
'/root/directory/a',
'/other/root/directory/',
},
}, {
'Workspace B',
'b',
'/root/directory/b',
}
}
-- e.g. https://github.com/goolord/alpha-nvim/blob/8a1477d8b99a931530f3cfb70f6805b759bebbf7/lua/alpha/themes/startify.lua#L28
local create_button = function(shortcut, text, keymap)
-- ...
end
local get_layout = function()
return query.alpha_workspace_layout(workspaces, create_button, {
others_name = 'Sessions Without Workspace',
})
end
-- use with the rest of sections for alpha.nvim, with throttling to avoid reading files on each redraw
local utils = require('possession.utils')
local sections = {
-- ...
sessions = {
type = 'group',
val = utils.throttle(get_layout, 5000),
},
-- ...
}