Awesome

olddirs.nvim

olddirs.nvim is like :oldfiles, but for directories. It provides autocommands which store the current directory in an olddirs file when Neovim starts or the directory is changed with :cd, :lcd, or :tcd. The old directories can be retrieved as a list of strings or through a telescope.nvim picker.

Table of Contents

• Table of Contents
• Motivation
• Documentation
• Installation
• Usage
• Configuration

Motivation

I work in a large monorepo and change my working directory depending on what part of the codebase I'm looking at to give my LSP (gopls) a chance and to improve the usefulness of fuzzy finding files. I want to change the current working directory back to a previously used one without having to configure a "project" or "workspace" beforehand. This requirement is not satisfied (as far as I can tell) by existing similar plugins:

• project.nvim
• telescope-project.nvim
• workspaces.nvim
• neovim-session-manager

olddirs.nvim is very lightweight and doesn't provide any niceties (out of the box*) like some of the above plugins, it's literally just :oldfiles for directories.

* I say "out of the box" since some features like the searching or browsing of files inside a previous directory can be implemented by adding actions to the olddirs.nvim Telescope picker.

Documentation

Documentation can be found in doc/olddirs.txt or by running :help olddirs.nvim.

Installation

Using packer.nvim

use('marcuscaisey/olddirs.nvim')

Using vim-plug

Plug 'marcuscaisey/olddirs.nvim'

Using dein

call dein#add('marcuscaisey/olddirs.nvim')

Usage

olddirs.get

The Lua API can be accessed by importing the olddirs module:

local olddirs = require('olddirs')

olddirs.get() returns the directories from the olddirs file in most recently used order.

Telescope

:information_source: The olddirs.nvim Telescope extension must be loaded before you can use the picker, see the Telescope configuration section.

The old directories can also be accessed using the Telescope picker telescope.extensions.olddirs.picker({opts}). {opts} can include regular Telescope options like layout_config, attach_mappings, and path_display as well as the olddirs.nvim specific option selected_dir_callback:

Example mappings

Default settings

local telescope = require('telescope')

vim.keymap.set('n', '<leader>od', telescope.extensions.olddirs.picker)

Overriding selected_dir_callback

local telescope = require('telescope')
local builtin = require('telescope.builtin')

-- Opens the Telescope find_files picker in the selected directory.
vim.keymap.set('n', '<leader>ofd', function()
  telescope.extensions.olddirs.picker({
    selected_dir_callback = function(dir)
      builtin.find_files({
        prompt_title = 'Find Files in ' .. dir,
        cwd = dir,
      })
    end,
  })
end)
-- Opens the Telescope live_grep picker in the selected directory.
vim.keymap.set('n', '<leader>ogd', function()
  telescope.extensions.olddirs.picker({
    selected_dir_callback = function(dir)
      builtin.live_grep({
        prompt_title = 'Live Grep in ' .. dir,
        search_dirs = { dir },
      })
    end,
  })
end)

Providing attach_mappings

local telescope = require('telescope')
local state = require('telescope.actions.state')
local builtin = require('telescope.builtin')

-- <c-p> opens the Telescope find_files picker in the selected directory.
-- <c-g> opens the Telescope live_grep picker in the selected directory.
vim.keymap.set('n', '<leader>od', function()
  telescope.extensions.olddirs.picker({
    attach_mappings = function(_, map)
      map({ 'i', 'n' }, '<c-p>', function()
        local dir = state.get_selected_entry().value
        builtin.find_files({
          prompt_title = 'Find Files in ' .. dir,
          cwd = dir,
        })
      end)
      map({ 'i', 'n' }, '<c-g>', function()
        local dir = state.get_selected_entry().value
        builtin.live_grep({
          prompt_title = 'Live Grep in ' .. dir,
          search_dirs = { dir },
        })
      end)
      return true
    end,
  })
end)

Configuration

olddirs.nvim

:information_source: The below example configuration is the default, so if you are happy with this then there's no need to call olddirs.setup.

local olddirs = require('olddirs')
olddirs.setup({
  file = vim.fn.stdpath('data') .. '/olddirs',
  limit = 100,
})

Telescope

To use the olddirs.nvim Telescope picker, you must load the extension:

telescope.load_extension('olddirs')

To configure the picker:

:information_source: The below example configuration is the default, so if you are happy with this then there's no need to provide it to telescope.setup.

local telescope = require('telescope')
telescope.setup({
  extensions = {
    olddirs = {
      selected_dir_callback = vim.cmd.lcd,
      ...
    },
  },
})

You can also provide any generic picker config in this section. For example:

local telescope = require('telescope')
telescope.setup({
  extensions = {
    olddirs = {
      selected_dir_callback = vim.cmd.cd,
      layout_config = {
        width = 0.6,
        height = 0.9,
      },
      previewer = false,
      path_display = function(_, path)
        return path:gsub('^' .. os.getenv('HOME'), '~')
      end,
    },
  },
})