[RO] buffers of netrw don’t get closed

[kogakure]

I found a strange behavior in using vim-vinegar. After a while the buffers opened by "-" don’t get closed any more and stick around (so there might be a dozen buffers with netrw trees open). It’s not possible to close them at all. Not with :bd, :q or even :!bd, !q. The only way to exit vim is to kill it or close the tmux window.

I get this error repeated when trying to close such a buffer:

E37: No write since last change (add ! to override)
E162: No write since last change for buffer "app/views/foldername"

This may be a conflict with some other plugins, but deactivating some plugins which handle buffers like Ctrl-P didn’t help.

[justinmk]

Yep, this is one of the most maddening behaviors of netrw. I actually have a hack in my vimrc to kill these buffers, but I haven't settled on whether it causes any side effects in netrw:

https://github.com/justinmk/config/blob/59b064bb9433449d308b7b889922e2d1c77a30c5/.vimrc#L662

To be clear, netrw sometimes leaves its buffers marked as 'readonly' and 'modified'.

[edkolev]

This isn't related to vim-vinegar. I've seen this before installing it.

I've fixed it by removing these 3 lines from my vimrc https://github.com/edkolev/dots/blob/2ade8ec0d427d7d0b087379239f0d893276ec1f9/vimrc#L297-L299

Not sure which one of them was causing the misbahavior

[justinmk]

Well treeview (g:netrw_liststyle=3) has all kinds of problems, but I don't think it is the cause of this issue.

[kejadlen]

I get the same thing, but I found that I could use :bd with the buffer id to close the buffer as a workaround. Ideally, I'd be able to just :bd in the buffer to kill it, though.

[jgallen23]

this still happens to me a lot. anybody come up with a solid workaround?

[jrhorn424]

Only slightly better is if you have a buffer manager (I user buffergator) you can usually mark buffers for deletion from that popup window. I choose the buffer in the buffergator window, press d, and move on to the next one that needs deleting. Works similar to emacs in that regard.

[serebrov]

This workaround seems to help:

function! QuitNetrw()
  for i in range(1, bufnr($))
    if buflisted(i)
      if getbufvar(i, '&filetype') == "netrw"
        silent exe 'bwipeout ' . i
      endif
    endif
  endfor
endfunction

autocmd MyAutoCmd VimLeavePre *  call QuitNetrw()

At least since I added this to vimrc I don't remember to have this problem.

[dnr]

:qa! works for me to quit vim when it gets into this state. I never had this problem with netrw alone, though, only when I started using vinegar.

[wedens]

I'll be glad if someone provide working solution.. Those stuck netrw buffers is freaking me out :(

[jrhorn424]

@wedens I've been navigating away from open netrw buffers with <C-o> and closing them with my buffer manager. I use unite to manage buffers, but most buffer managers have d mapped to close the highlighted buffer in the management window. Otherwise, list the buffers with ls and then issue a bdelete $number where $number is the number of the buffer listed in ls output.

[tpope]

There has to be a better way than these convolusions. What about

autocmd FileType netrw setl bufhidden=delete

[jgallen23]

@tpope that didn't work for me. I still get netrw buffers listed (ones with - at the end are netrw):

[tpope]

Can you check and make sure 'bufhidden' is getting set? You can also try a value of wipe.

[jgallen23]

bufhidden doesn't appear to be set. Not sure if it's conflicting with other plugins. I know ctrlp tries to do something special with netrw

[hkjels]

On my box, netrw remains hidden to the native vim buffer-lists, but for some reason Unite buffer will display them. Really annoying.

[justinmk]

I recommend ~~filebeagle~~ https://github.com/justinmk/vim-dirvish if you don't use the remote features of netrw.

[jgallen23]

Thanks @justinmk going to give that a try because buffers are still not getting closed.

I dug a little deeper and when I manually open up netrw, the buffers don't show up, but if I use vinegar they do.

[hkjels]

This is very annoying. I've tried to find what causes this bug without any luck.

[jgallen23]

I just ended up just using netrw without vinegar because this bug was so annoying.

[dnr]

I switched to filebeagle also (https://github.com/jeetsukumaran/vim-filebeagle). It's just like netrw+vinegar, but faster and without this bug.

[jgallen23]

@dnr I tried filebeagle, but it didn't have a way to create directories or delete files, which is important to me

[ashwin]

Adding this to .vimrc did not work for me:

autocmd FileType netrw setl bufhidden=delete

However, this worked partially for me:

autocmd FileType netrw setl bufhidden=wipe

The first buffer used by NetRW would stick around. But all subsequent NetRW buffers get wiped by this command.

[Konfekt]

Both additions should fall flat because netrw resets &bufhidden in ~.vim/autoload/netrw.vim. See http://www.reddit.com/r/vim/comments/2vfb8o/ignore_certain_buffers_from_c6_jumps/coh6wo9

[zhanjh]

try :set confirm or maybe :set hidden

[errinlarsen]

What ever happened to this? I still seem to have this bug happening.

[gn0rt0n]

I am still getting this bug as well

[bullfight]

I encountered this most when attempting to close all my currently open buffers with something like :bufdo bd however I just found that you can use :%bd instead and this works even with an open netrw buffer.

[urxvtcd]

for me it was treeview. removing g:netrw_liststyle=3 from my vimrc seems to work

[trevordmiller]

I'm having a similar problem; I made a video of the entire process: https://youtu.be/GSEZteQWkW4

It doesn't seem to have anything to do with vinegar or how many buffers I have open; however, when I create a split window and open netrw, that window becomes "locked" in read-only ([RO]) mode. I don't have any netrw or vinegar settings in my .vimrc.

@tpope, sorry to pollute your plugin with this as I know it is a netrw problem and not a Vinegar problem - but any ideas how to fix this?

[ericbock]

I found that if I have set hidden in my .vimrc or if called before my first netrw - that I get these orphan netrw buffers. If I don't, I can open a file with vim-vinegar / netrw and then set hidden and things work as expected (no orphans).