Prevent automatic change of cwd when navigating files in a mono repo

[simonvizzini]

Hey everyone,

I decided to ditch my own Neovim config because it was too much of a hassle to keep up with the constant changes in the plugin ecosystem and decided to give LunarVim a shot. So far I'm really happy with it but there is one thing that is really annoying me and I can't figure out which option is responsible for it.

In my current project I'm working on a JS project powered by lerna, which allows us to make use of a "mono repo" setup with multiple JS apps and libraries inside a single git repo.

The simplified repo structure is something like this:

packages
  app1
    src
      index.ts
    package.json
  app2
    src
      index.ts
    package.json
  lib1
    src
      index.ts
    package.json
  lib2
    src
      index.ts
    package.json
lerna.json
package.json

I open LunarVim at the root of the repo, but whenever I navigate to a file inside one of the package folders (either by Nvim-Tree or Telescope file picker) it will change the working directory to the root of the package folder, e.g. if I open packages/app1/src/index.ts it will cwd into packages/app1. How can I prevent that? I want the working directory to stay at the repo root all the time.

I tried to set the various cwd options of Nvim-Tree, like these:

lvim.builtin.nvimtree.setup.update_cwd = false
lvim.builtin.nvimtree.setup.update_focused_file.update_cwd = false

but to no avail. I checked LunarVims default Telescope config here but I don't see anything related to cwd there.

I'd appreciate any hints, it's the only thing holding me back from being productive with lunarvim. Thanks a lot :)

[simonvizzini]

Finally found the place responsible for changing the cwd. It's on this line:

LunarVim/lua/lvim/core/nvimtree.lua

Line 120 in ff9ae8f

lvim.builtin.nvimtree.setup.update_cwd = true

Basically if lvim.builtin.project.active is true (which is the default) it will set the nvimtree option update_cwd also to true, effectively overriding my own config. So disabling this project feature did solve my issue, although now I can't use this feature anymore, which is unfortunate but I can live without it for now.

[gligorot]

For anyone reading now, update_cwd in the meantime has been renamed to update_root. source

Also, the accepted answer doesn't work anymore, pwdstill changes when navigating in a monorepo project. Any updates on the fixes on your side @simonvizzini @randomgeek78 ?

[gligorot]

For me it's more annoying that Telecope live_grep uses pwd (and not the directory where lvim was ran from) than nvimtree changing the visible folder, so I'll try to find solutions in that direction. Will report back if I find anything.

[gligorot]

Update: this works, but it's obviously very inflexible for multiple projects:
lvim.keys.normal_mode["<Space>tg"] = "<cmd>Telescope live_grep cwd=/Users/.../Projects/monorepo-project <CR>"

I tried to find whether nvim keeps the starting directory* somewhere, but didn't manage to. I'd expect then it would be easy to say
Telescope live_grep cwd=$starting_directory or something similar, but my nvim/Lua knowledge is low so I can't be sure.

* for example

cd Projects/monorepo-project
lvim .
# $starting directory would be /Users/.../Projects/monorepo-project

[gligorot]

I think I found a better fix for this:

-- lvim.builtin.project.detection_methods = { "pattern" } -- lvim default [1]
lvim.builtin.project.patterns = { ">Projects", ".git" } -- defaults include other VCSs, Makefile, package.json

The ">Projects" pattern basically says that root can be a direct child of the folder "Projects" pattern.
".git" is set as a backup.

Now when navigating with telescope it works as expected and keeps the root fixed. But when actually changing a project or going to config.lua ([space]Lc) it changes as expected.

In the weird case that it does switch to a project inside the monorepo, running :ProjectRoot seems to always go back in the tree and correctly finds the correct monorepo root.

[1]

[mkarbo]

MVP both of you

[danielo515]

You can also configure how the CWD is decided. So for example, you can say that projects are first defined by the presence of lerna.json, then the project will be based on the presence of that file first, and fallback to git or package.json after that

[simonvizzini]

Hey @danielo515, how exactly do you configure that in LunarVim? Is it some plugin config or LVim config itself? For example I know that null-ls has a root_dir option to specify the root dir by providing file names to look for, like lerna.json etc. That's how I did it in my own neovim config and it worked fine, but I checked the LunarVim code and I can't see this option being used, so there must be other ways to configure this somehow.

[danielo515]

It is a project feature, but can be configured via lvim like this:

lvim.builtin.project.patterns = { ".git", "package.json" }

I don't have much experience with it, but I think it gives precedence to earlier names, so in this case it will use the git folder and fallback to package.json

[simonvizzini]

Oh I see, I actually tried that as well as disabling project completely via lvim.builtin.project.active = false and in my case it didn't help. Seems that project is not responsible for my issue, it has to be triggered by something else..

[rebuilt]

After setting project to false, run PackerClean to uninstall the plugin.

[simonvizzini]

Turns out my issue was not caused by changing CWD but due to a bug in the null-ls language server formatter override which is present in the current stable branch. The rolling branch does not have this issue and I have since switched to rolling.

[ubmit]

Is there an "official" way of handling different roots?