How can I force a plugin to load earlier? (rocks-config)

[jumpyjacko]

I have my colourscheme working based on the mini.base16 package and my statusline is the heirline.nvim package. I use the rocks-config helper for the configuration. I saw in the bottom of the readme that it says:

If you need to source a plugin's scripts eagerly (for example, to load colorschemes), you can set the plugin's opt = true in rocks.toml, and then load it with vim.cmd.Rocks({"packadd", ""}) or require("rocks").packadd("<rock-name").

So I added opt = true to the mini.base16 line in rocks.toml and then put in my init.lua, require("rocks").packadd("mini.base16"). Sometimes it loads before heirline.nvim and sometimes it still loads after heirline.nvim which breaks the colours on it (same behaviour as if I didn't try to eagerly load mini.base16).

Is init.lua the correct place to put the packadd command? Is there a better way to define load order for specific plugins?

[mrcjkb]

Update

This issue has been solved since version 2.25.0.

rocks.nvim now maintains symlinks in a site/pack/opt directory, which makes installed plugins available on the runtimepath by the time Neovim sources init.lua, while handing over control of sourcing plugins to rocks.nvim.

Plugins with opt = true can now be sourced with Neovim's builtin :packadd, making :Rocks packadd and require("rocks").packadd obsolete.

Original response

Hey 👋

This seems to me like an issue with the heirline.nvim plugin.
Its API allows the colors option to be a function, which would be useful if it would evaluate it lazily (i.e. when the colors are needed).
But that's not the case. As soon as you call setup, it evaluates the colors function.

A proper solutionto this would be to fix this in heirline.nvim, by changing loaded_colors to be a function and evaluating it as needed¹ .

For now, you can work around this by calling mini.base16's setup function in your init.lua, but this will cause an error if the plugin isn't installed².

@vhyrro is planning to work on a config.bundles feature for rocks-config.nvim, which would let you use a single config for multiple related plugins. That would be useful to solve this issue for rocks-config.nvim.

Footnotes

1. This solution would fix the issue, regardless of the plugin manager you are using (I might PR that fix later, if I find some time). ↩

2. A downside of the setup antipattern 😞 ↩

[mrcjkb]

rebelot/heirline.nvim#190

[mrcjkb]

@jumpyjacko it looks like heirline expects you to set up an autocommand for colorscheme events:

https://github.com/rebelot/heirline.nvim/blob/master/cookbook.md#theming

[jumpyjacko]

Should this be put within my setup file or somewhere else? I currently have it in my lua/plugins/heirline.lua file near the top.

https://github.com/jumpyjacko/nvim/blob/e81c14cf9c9eee5b99be64ffb8619085090e138b/lua/plugins/heirline.lua#L26C1-L26C58

[mrcjkb]

That seems like it should work.
You probably also want to set the colorscheme in the mini.base16 config file, after calling its setup function.

[jumpyjacko]

Yep, it seems I was actually setting up the colourscheme entirely wrong. Thanks for the help!

https://github.com/jumpyjacko/nvim/blob/0ae5176248ee35c3b58cc06df84176fac3d16e8d/colors/modified_ocean.lua#L1
https://github.com/jumpyjacko/nvim/blob/0ae5176248ee35c3b58cc06df84176fac3d16e8d/init.lua#L5

Edit: In fact, this loads the colourscheme first, right with init.lua, meaning this was never a problem with rocks.nvim. Sorry for the trouble!

000.005  000.005: --- NVIM STARTING ---
...
003.091  000.043  000.043: sourcing /usr/share/nvim/runtime/ftplugin.vim
003.158  000.021  000.021: sourcing /usr/share/nvim/runtime/indent.vim
003.201  000.009  000.009: sourcing /usr/share/nvim/archlinux.vim
003.203  000.022  000.013: sourcing /etc/xdg/nvim/sysinit.vim
003.812  000.581  000.581: require('options')
005.617  001.802  001.802: require('mappings')
005.692  000.016  000.016: require('vim.fs')
005.737  000.115  000.099: require('rocks-setup')
007.967  001.276  001.276: require('mini.base16')
009.087  002.419  001.143: sourcing /home/jackson/.config/nvim/colors/modified_ocean.lua
009.096  005.881  000.964: sourcing /home/jackson/.config/nvim/init.lua
...