nvim-rooter.lua

A high performance plugin to change your working directory to the project root when you open a file. Basically a minimal version of vim-rooter written in lua.

Installation

Using vim-plug

Plug 'notjedi/nvim-rooter.lua'

Using packer

-- NOTE: avoid lazy loading as the autocmds may not be caught by nvim-rooter.lua.
use {
    'notjedi/nvim-rooter.lua',
    config = function() require'nvim-rooter'.setup() end
}

Usage

One line setup. This will create an autocmd for FileType * to change to root directory everytime you switch buffers.

lua require'nvim-rooter'.setup()

• For nvim-tree support/integration, add the following to you nvim-tree config:

require("nvim-tree").setup({
  update_cwd = true,
  update_focused_file = {
    enable = true,
    update_cwd = true
  },
})

Configuration

The following snippet is the default configuration. Also note that you can use globs.

require('nvim-rooter').setup {
  rooter_patterns = { '.git', '.hg', '.svn' },
  trigger_patterns = { '*' },
  manual = false,
  fallback_to_parent = false,
  cd_scope = "global",
}

Specify the root is a certain directory, prefix it with =

lua require('nvim-rooter').setup { rooter_patterns = { '=src' } }

To invoke :Rooter manually and not have it run everytime you switch/open buffers, you can pass the following argument while setting up nvim-rooter.

lua  require('nvim-rooter').setup { manual = true }

By default all files trigger :Rooter but you can configure this by passing the trigger_patterns argument while you call setup()

lua require('nvim-rooter').setup { trigger_patterns = { '*.py', '*.lua' } }

Exclude certain filetypes using the config below. Note that filetypes is must be passed as arguments and not file extensions. For example: python instead of py. Use vim.bo.filetype to get the filetype of the current buffer.

lua require('nvim-rooter').setup { exclude_filetypes = { 'python', 'lua' } }

Change to the directory of the file when it has no root

lua  require('nvim-rooter').setup { fallback_to_parent = true }

Change the scope of working directory change. The supported values are:

• global (default): Changes global cwd with vim.api.nvim_set_current_dir()
• window: Changes window-local cwd with :lcd
• tabpage: Changes tabpage-local cwd with :tcd
• smart: If local cwd is already set, changes local cwd. If not, changes global cwd. Check :h chdir() for more detail.

lua require('nvim-rooter').setup { cd_scope = "window" }

Comparison

	vim-rooter	nvim-rooter.lua	rooter.nvim
loading time	0.185 ms	0.083 ms	3.206 ms
:RooterToggle	❌	✔️	❌
trigger :Rooter on filename match	✔️	✔️	❌
exclude filetypes	✔️	✔️	❌
resolve symlinks	✔️	✔️	❌
emit autocmd	✔️	❌	❌
= prefix	✔️	✔️	❌
other prefixes	✔️	❌	❌
support files in HDD	✔️	✔️	❌

Note: what :RooterToggle does is, it switches between root and current directory. whereas in vim-rooter, it toggles between automatic and manual mode.

Note: the loading time was profiled using the --startuptime option.

Roadmap

• Change to project root directory using patterns
• cmd to toggle - something like :RooterToggle (not the same as vim-rooter)
• Support nvim-tree
• Resolve symlinks
• support something like =src
• cache results
• use setup()
• cleanup code
• manual trigger
• when rootless
• cleanup code
• Emit autocmd?
• write tests
• Extended support for patterns like vim-rooter?
• Support which directories/files trigger :Rooter?

References

• How to write neovim plugins in Lua
• lua - learn X in Y minutes
• vim-rooter
• rooter.nvim

Inspired by

• vim-rooter

This was originally meant to be a PR to rooter.nvim, but then i ended up rewriting everything, cause I like the lua language and wanted to do something with it. Also there was way too many different and unrelated changes to PR, so I ended up forking it.

This plugin was written on stream. I don't have previous experience with lua (except for the nvim config), just skimmed through the first 2 references in 20 minutes and started writing this plugin, and this is my first lua project or even my first vim plugin so please don't judge what i was doing on stream.