Show Git status on files and folders

[jan-xyz]

Is your feature request related to a problem? Please describe.
I would like to quickly see paths that have modifications or are newly added so that I quickly see the current state of my work.

Describe the solution you'd like
Have git status indicators on the paths that are changed, similar to other file-browsers (nvim-tree, nerdtree, etc.)

Describe alternatives you've considered
Use Telescope git_status, however, I would like to have a single command to open the file overview and increase information density.

Additional context

File status with Telescope git_status

[jamestrew]

Seems like a decent idea. I will look into this.

[jan-xyz]

I can also help with the implementation myself. I am just new to the code base and would need some guidance maybe for starting points and implementation approach.

[fdschmidt93]

Sure, happy to have this!

I can also help with the implementation myself.

Sounds great! With my prior experience, it'd be actually quite easy and I'm happy to do this eventually as part of the large RFC in #210. I'd probably do it synchronously and just parse it efficiently as git status seems to be relatively fast (~5ms)

local bench = require "plenary.benchmark"
local Job = require "plenary.job"

local function git_status_for_folder()
  local entries, _ = Job:new({ command = "git", args = { "status", "-s", "." } }):sync()
  return entries
end

local function git_status_for_file(file)
  local entries, _ = Job:new({ command = "git", args = { "status", "-s", ".", "--", file } }):sync()
  return entries
end

bench("git status", {
  warmup = 10,
  runs = 50,
  fun = {
    {
      "git status for file",
      function()

        git_status_for_file $YOUR_FILE
      end,
    },
    {
      "git status for folder",
      function()
        -- return fd()
        git_status_for_folder()
      end,
    },
  },
})

I'm also happy to let you have a shot and guide you towards a PR though :) - Some further thoughts below.

By synchronous I mean that it would trigger needs_sync in finders.lua, then you have all entries and just can pass them as a table.concat(entries, " ")

Job:new({ command = "git", args = { "status", "-s", "--", table.concat(entries, " ") } }):sync()

This might be a bit too slow however for large repositories (linux repo takes 180ms for git status -s -- .). So it might make sense to only do it on the visible entries upfront, cache, and then do it incrementally for entries that are shown but don't have it yet. I think that would have very good performance while allowing us to not have to meddle with async stuff.

On a high-level:

a) look at https://github.com/nvim-telescope/telescope.nvim/blob/a606bd10c79ec5989c76c49cc6f736e88b63f0da/lua/telescope/builtin/__git.lua#L306-L338
b) telescope's entry maker to parse the output for each file and render it in the results buffer: https://github.com/nvim-telescope/telescope.nvim/blob/a606bd10c79ec5989c76c49cc6f736e88b63f0da/lua/telescope/make_entry.lua#L1302-L1355

For means of background on how finder entry maker etc relate to one another, telescope docs have an overview of the architecture :h telescope.nvim (architectural overview is amongst first things).

The make entry logic would have to be ported to the telescope-file-browser logic. A PR doesn't need to be that polished because I'd probably merge it into the RFC PR (#210 is going to be very big and clean up a lot - also the entry maker to some degree, but quite exciting stuff :)

Hope that helps, let me know in case you need more input! Apologies for wall of text, writing this quickly raw on train on way to NYE festivities.

[jan-xyz]

@fdschmidt93 Thanks for the pointers they were already really helpful!

I was wondering if the make_entry function should rather fetch the git status when it makes the entries? I would need to somehow think anyways about how to merge the unchanged files with the ones that I get back from git status. That way it could be similarly implemented to the display_stat functionality.