File tree workaround for Helix

Quan Tong

"Life is all about sharing. If we are good at something, pass it on." - Mary Berry

File tree workaround for Helix

2023-08-02

Categories: Development Environment

nnn as a file tree workaround for Helix

Many people have expressed that the absence of a file tree is what prevents them from using Helix.

If, for some reasons, you cannot use the PR #5768, here’s a workaround to create a file tree using WezTerm and nnn

The idea here is to implement a custom opener in nnn. When navigating to a file, it will be opened using hx in the right pane. When opening another file, it checks if there is a running instance of hx in the right pane and sends the :open $1\r command to that pane.

Here’s the implementation:

 1#!/usr/bin/env sh
 2
 3fpath="$1"
 4
 5pane_id=$(wezterm cli get-pane-direction right)
 6if [ -z "${pane_id}" ]; then
 7  pane_id=$(wezterm cli split-pane --right --percent 80)
 8fi
 9
10program=$(wezterm cli list | awk -v pane_id="$pane_id" '$3==pane_id { print $6 }')
11if [ "$program" = "hx" ]; then
12  echo ":open ${fpath}\r" | wezterm cli send-text --pane-id $pane_id --no-paste
13else
14  echo "hx ${fpath}" | wezterm cli send-text --pane-id $pane_id --no-paste
15fi
16
17wezterm cli activate-pane-direction --pane-id $pane_id right

1$ export NNN_OPENER=nnn-hx.sh
2$ nnn -c

This allows you to efficiently manage your files and work with Helix using WezTerm and nnn.

Tags: helix wezterm nnn

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