Not working anymore

[fritzrehde]

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This cli tool doesn't seem to work for me any more. Is it still supposed to work? Or did you find another way to achieve the same goal?

[richardhttps]

check out nvim-remote

[pipoprods]

It seems nvim 0.8.0 doesn't create a socket anymore.

You can have it working again by starting nvim with the following command:

nvim --listen $(mktemp --directory /tmp/nvimXXXXXX)/0 $@

(edit: missing $@ in command line)

[fritzrehde]

This script is what I use now (with nvim 0.8.0 as well);

#!/bin/sh

# send command to all nvim instances

ls $XDG_RUNTIME_DIR/nvim.*.0 \
	| xargs -I {} nvim --server {} --remote-send "$1"

[richardhttps]

i've managed to make it work without any tool with a bash script trigged with a hotkey and a bash function in bashrc the function is just an nvim command with added parameters to initiate a server every time you launch nvim and save each server to a seperate file with a unique filename. the script consists of a for loop to go through each of those files and send a nvim --remote-send to all of them

works very smoothly

Edit: now using OP's solution below

[fritzrehde]

i've managed to make it work without any tool with a bash script trigged with a hotkey and a bash function in bashrc the function is just an nvim command with added parameters to initiate a server every time you launch nvim and save each server to a seperate file with a unique filename. the script consists of a for loop to go through each of those files and send a nvim --remote-send to all of them

works very smoothly

Yeah, I thought of doing that too, but I didn't want an nvim wrapper starting a server each time, so I used the above script and it works perfectly without any nvim wrapper (i.e. I just call nvim normally and it still works). Maybe give it a try! It's literally a one line script!

[pipoprods]

This script is what I use now (with nvim 0.8.0 as well);

Working perfectly for me as well :)

I just had to surround the commands I used to send through nvim-ctrl between a <esc>: and a <cr>.

Thanks for sharing this!

[fritzrehde]

Yeah, I do something like that too. Here's the snippet I use to change the color theme in all open nvim instances:

nvim-ctl.sh ":colorscheme nord | source ~/.config/nvim/statusline.vim<cr>" &

The | allows you to execute multiple commands at once, that's more efficient than executing the script multiple times due to the lengthy for loop/xargs.

[Samasaur1]

This script is what I use now (with nvim 0.8.0 as well);

#!/bin/sh

# send command to all nvim instances

ls $XDG_RUNTIME_DIR/nvim.*.0 \
	| xargs -I {} nvim --server {} --remote-send "$1"

This doesn't work as nvim-ctrl did when the other instances are not in command mode. As someone else said, you can use : and <CR> to get to command mode from normal mode, but then this relies on your nvim instances being in normal mode. The advantage to using the neovim API is that you can run a command (a command-mode command) even when the editor is in insert mode.

Furthermore, neovim does still use sockets in 0.8.0 (that's what the script is lsing). I think they've just moved location. Unfortunately, on macOS, there is no $XDG_RUNTIME_DIR, so I've resorted to fd "nvim\..*\.0" /private/var to find them. Then we need to try and use the API to control them rather than --remote-keys, so that it works when the instances are not in normal mode. Here's an adaptation of the source code for this package that does what I want:

use std::path::PathBuf;

use anyhow::Result;
use neovim_lib::{Neovim, NeovimApi, Session};
use structopt::StructOpt;

#[derive(StructOpt)]
#[structopt(about = "Control nvim from the CLI!")]
struct Control {
    socket: String,
    cmd: String,
}

fn main() -> Result<()> {
    let args = Control::from_args();
    let mut s = Session::new_unix_socket(args.socket).ok().unwrap();
    s.start_event_loop();
    Neovim::new(s).command(&args.cmd);
    Ok(())
}

Then you can have this script:

fd "nvim\..*\.0" /private/var/ | xargs -I {} /path/to/executable {} "$1"

and it should work even when in insert mode

If you have $XDG_RUNTIME_DIR correctly working on your machine, the Rust code may still be useful if you want to be able to execute commands when other nvim instances are in insert mode.

[fritzrehde]

That looks cool! But I don't really want a whole (Rust) program as a dependency, for my simple use-case adding a simple <esc> to the beginning of the command (e.g. nvim-ctl.sh "<esc>:colorscheme nord | source ~/.config/nvim/statusline.vim<cr>" &) works just fine for exiting either insert or command mode first.

[Samasaur1]

Yeah, I definitely agree! I'd like to have the functionality of fd built into this tool, but there doesn't appear to be a library for using fd and I couldn't get other file searching libraries to work. And as you said, it still would require you to have a Rust program, but I think it may mean that this tool can become functional again if it simply changes where it searches for sockets.

[fritzrehde]

Really, I don't think fd is a requirement for such a task. I don't even use it in my script anymore, I use ls instead (I like fd a lot, but ls is obviously installed on any system and therefore more portable). My current script is just

ls $XDG_RUNTIME_DIR/nvim.*.0 | xargs -I {} nvim --server {} --remote-send "$1"

[Samasaur1]

Really, I don't think fd is a requirement for such a task. I don't even use it in my script anymore, I use ls instead (I like fd a lot, but ls is obviously installed on any system and therefore more portable). My current script is just

ls $XDG_RUNTIME_DIR/nvim.*.0 | xargs -I {} nvim --server {} --remote-send "$1"

I tried that, but macOS is being stupid as usual and there's no single directory where all the sockets are placed (it's like three nested temporary directories), so I resorted to fd. I could probably use ls if I set $XDG_RUNTIME_DIR manually, but as it is some find/fd equivalent is required

[bejuba]

Thanks for the great script. I adapted it to use --remote-expr together with "excecute(' ... ' )" instead of --remote-send. This works independent of the current mode and does not require a rust program. E.g. I use the following snippets to trigger automatic light/dark mode switching of my nvim colorsheme via the gnome night-theme-switcher extension.

ls $XDG_RUNTIME_DIR/nvim.*.0 | xargs -I {} nvim --server {} --remote-expr "execute('set background=light')"

ls $XDG_RUNTIME_DIR/nvim.*.0 | xargs -I {} nvim --server {} --remote-expr "execute('set background=dark')"

[fritzrehde]

Nice! Do you know if the | still works to execute two commands at once. I use <esc>:colorscheme nord | source ~/.config/nvim/statusline.vim<cr> currently. But your solution looks less hacky than mine, maybe I have to try it as well.

[bejuba]

Yes, you can use | to send multiple commands. Everything in the single quotes gets executed. No need for the : at the beginning.