Order buffers by recency in mini.pick

[n1ghtmare]

Contributing guidelines

• I have read CODE_OF_CONDUCT.md

Module(s)

mini.pick

Question

Hey folks,

Is there a way to order the buffers by recency in the built-in picker somehow? Has anyone done that? In telescope it used to just work, not sure if it's just simple ordering by their Ids or something.

[echasnovski]

I vaguely remember it being asked somewhere here, but can not find it.

There is no built-in way to do it and requires writing custom source/picker. The reason for this is to limit complexity (both in implementation and configuration) and to reuse :buffers output directly (as it has some of the work done in filtering/sorting buffers and formatting their names).

You can have custom picker that sorts buffers by "recency" with something like this (use later with :Pick my_buffers):

require('mini.pick').setup()
MiniPick.registry.my_buffers = function()
  local items, cwd = {}, vim.fn.getcwd()
  for _, buf_info in ipairs(vim.fn.getbufinfo()) do
    if buf_info.listed == 1 then
      local name = vim.fs.relpath(cwd, buf_info.name) or buf_info.name
      table.insert(items, { text = name, bufnr = buf_info.bufnr, _lastused = buf_info.lastused })
    end
  end

  table.sort(items, function(a, b) return a._lastused > b._lastused end)

  local show = function(buf_id, items_to_show, query)
    MiniPick.default_show(buf_id, items_to_show, query, { show_icons = true })
  end
  local opts = { source = { name = 'Buffers', items = items, show = show } }
  return MiniPick.start(opts)
end

[n1ghtmare]

Thank you so much! This works exactly as I expect it to! IMO this should probably be the default of how this picker works, but I'm sure you have a good reason (i.e. to keep the plugin simple) to keep it this way, which I totally get.

I really appreciate all the hard work you do, your plugins are amazing, I can't live without them!

[echasnovski]

I really appreciate all the hard work you do, your plugins are amazing, I can't live without them!

Thank you for kind words. More feature coverage via new modules is planned in the future :)