Treemacs Incorrectly Displays $HOME as Root on First Project Open in Doom Emacs

[xxh160]

I confirm that...

• [X] I have searched the issue tracker, documentation, FAQ, Discourse, and Google, in case this issue has already been reported/resolved.

• [X] I have read "How to Debug Issues", and will use it to provide as much information about this issue as possible.

• [X] The issue can be reproduced on the latest available commit of Doom.

• [X] The issue can be reproduced on a stable release of Emacs, such as 27, 28, or 29. (Unstable versions end in .50, .60, or .9x)

Expected behavior

After opening Doom Emacs from a closed state, the first project opened with spc p p (which has a .projectile in the root directory) should correctly display its project root path.

Current behavior

When I open Doom Emacs from a closed state and open the first project with spc p p, the treemacs view does not display correctly. The root directory shown is my $HOME.

After some investigation, I think the problem may lie in the +workspaces-switch-to-project-h function:

diff --git a/modules/ui/workspaces/autoload/workspaces.el b/modules/ui/workspaces/autoload/workspaces.el
index 840ca1d5..04ef2240 100644
--- a/modules/ui/workspaces/autoload/workspaces.el
+++ b/modules/ui/workspaces/autoload/workspaces.el
@@ -545,7 +545,11 @@ This be hooked to `projectile-after-switch-project-hook'."
       (unwind-protect
           (if (and (not (null +workspaces-on-switch-project-behavior))
                    (or (eq +workspaces-on-switch-project-behavior t)
-                       (equal (safe-persp-name (get-current-persp)) persp-nil-name)
+                       ;; HACK Perspective main
+                       (let ((current-persp-name (safe-persp-name (get-current-persp))))
+                         (or (equal current-persp-name persp-nil-name)
+                             (equal current-persp-name "main")))
+                       ;; (equal (safe-persp-name (get-current-persp)) persp-nil-name)
                        (+workspace-buffer-list)))
               (let* ((persp
                       (let ((project-name (doom-project-name +workspaces--project-dir)))

When Doom Emacs starts, the default workspace is Perspective main. At this point, the if check in +workspaces-switch-to-project-h will be false, and the function behavior is to call +workspace-rename to rename the current workspace, but it only changes the name of the perspective, not the project name and path.

As shown in the diff, after I added the check for "main", the behavior became to create a new workspace whether or not Doom Emacs has just been opened, which temporarily solves my problem.

Steps to reproduce

1. Open Doom Emacs from a closed state.
2. Use spc p p to open a pre-configured project. As seen in the image(treemacs-edit-workspaces), the project path is correctly configured.
3. Use spc o p to open the treemacs sidebar.
4. Notice that the root directory in treemacs is $HOME.

System Information

https://pastebin.com/a98uiJcL

[chris-johnson-7r]

I have the same issue and your patch resolves it for me as well. If you need any help testing fixes let me know.

[rubin55]

Argh this is driving me crazy! I'm now running into exactly this issue consistently but I didn't have this behaviour before. @hlissner is this introduced by something doom patched for treemacs? The workaround-patch mentioned above works, but I do get a noisy error message with a bunch of nils on exit when using it. Would really like a fix for this.

[panchoh]

When this happens to me, I use this workaround: rm ~/.config/emacs/.local/cache/treemacs-persist

[hlissner]

I can't reproduce this, but I think I know where you're coming from. Treemacs, by default, remembers all the projects you open it from, and this memory of projects persists across Emacs sessions (saved in $EMACSDIR/.local/cache/treemacs-persist), so if you've opened treemacs in the past from $HOME, $HOME will be in the treemacs buffer (among other projects, but it'll be the first if it's the first project you opened -- see the screenshot).

You can either remove projects from treemacs with M-x treemacs-remove-project-from-workspace (and add them with M-x treemacs-add-project-to-workspace). OR, and I think this is what you are all asking for, use the treemacs-display-current-project-exclusively command (has no default keybind in Doom). This opens treemacs with only the current project visible.

So try it out: M-x treemacs-add-and-display-current-project-exclusively, and see if you're seeing what you're expecting.

---

By the way, the patch above fixes the issue indirectly because Doom configures Treemacs to have different project listings per workspace. By creating a new workspace, you're just resetting Treemacs.

[hlissner]

As of f9dfb7e I've changed +treemacs/toggle (on SPC o p) to use treemacs-add-and-display-current-project-exclusively.

[panchoh]

The new behavior fixes the issue for me, yay! so thanks for that, @hlissner.

Also, with your explanation it is clear to me now that, in my case at least, this was caused by me running emacs as a daemon (as setup by Home Manager), since the emacs process will be opened on $HOME. I just checked, and starting with no treemacs-persist, launching the daemon automatically yields:

$ cat ~/.config/emacs/.local/cache/treemacs-persist
* No Perspective
** pancho
 - path :: ~