vim-sidebar-manager

A sidebar manger for Vim/Neovim to mimic an IDE-like UI layout.

TL;DR

Motivation

We have a lot of plugins who open windows at your editor's side. I would call them "sidebars". Unfortunately, those plugins do no cooperate with each other. For example, if you have NERDTree and Tagbar installed, and configured to open at the same side, they can open simultaneously, and you have to control each of them individually. I think a better approach would be to "switch" them. That is, when you switch to NERDTree, Tagbar is closed automatically, and when you switch to Tagbar, NERDTree is closed automatically. As a result, it gives you a feeling that there is always a bar at a side, where there are several pages that can be switched back and forth. That's pretty much like a typical UI layout of an IDE. What's more, I want to use the same key for switching and toggling. I wrote a lot of code to implement this behavior in the past years, and finally noticed that an abstraction layer can be made, and that's this plugin.

Example

Here's an example of configuration for NERDTree, Tagbar and Undotree at the left side.

let g:NERDTreeWinPos = 'left'
let g:NERDTreeWinSize = 40
let g:NERDTreeQuitOnOpen = 0
let g:tagbar_left = 1
let g:tagbar_width = 40
let g:tagbar_autoclose = 0
let g:tagbar_autofocus = 1
let g:undotree_SetFocusWhenToggle = 1
let g:undotree_SplitWidth = 40

let g:sidebars = {
  \ 'nerdtree': {
  \     'position': 'left',
  \     'check_win': {nr -> getwinvar(nr, '&filetype') ==# 'nerdtree'},
  \     'open': 'NERDTree',
  \     'close': 'NERDTreeClose'
  \ },
  \ 'tagbar': {
  \     'position': 'left',
  \     'check_win': {nr -> bufname(winbufnr(nr)) =~ '__Tagbar__'},
  \     'open': 'TagbarOpen',
  \     'close': 'TagbarClose'
  \ },
  \ 'undotree': {
  \     'position': 'left',
  \     'check_win': {nr -> getwinvar(nr, '&filetype') ==# 'undotree'},
  \     'open': 'UndotreeShow',
  \     'close': 'UndotreeHide'
  \ }
  \ }

noremap <silent> <M-1> :call sidebar#toggle('nerdtree')<CR>
noremap <silent> <M-2> :call sidebar#toggle('tagbar')<CR>
noremap <silent> <M-3> :call sidebar#toggle('undotree')<CR>

let g:startify_session_before_save = ['call sidebar#close_all()']

Notes:

• vim-sidebar-manager is designed to be non-intrusive, that is, it does not actually move your windows or change your windows' sizes. The position field in each sidebar description is only a flag for recognition. If you want them to open at the same side, you have to adjust the individual plugins' configurations.

• The check_win field must be a Funcref who takes the winnr as an argument and returns a boolean (number) to indicate whether or not the window corresponding to this nr is the specific kind of sidebar window .

• The open and close fields can be either a string of command or a Funcref.

For more examples, please refer to the Wiki page