A minimal approach to manage your project specific settings in Neovim.

nvim-projectrc is a plugin for Neovim that allows you to manage your project specific settings in a simple, yet effective way.

I build this plugin because I have only small differences between my projects, e.g., different text widths, linters, and language servers. I did not want to create a new configuration file for each project, and I surely did not want to place if statements all over my configuration. As such, nvim-projectrc is based on the following requirements:

• One global configuration file is used where each project makes its own modifications to.
• It is easy to integrate in an existing configuration.
• The project identifier can be set from outside of Neovim, using an environment variable.

See the usage section for more information.

Install the plugin using your favorite plugin manager. For example, using lazy:

return {
    "BartSte/nvim-projectrc",
    priority = 100,
    lazy = false
}

Lazy loading is not recommended as you need this plugin to load the configuration of other plugins.

This plugin exposes the following 2 components that are of key interest:

• PROJECTRC environment variable
• require("projectrc").require

Here, the PROJECTRC must be set before calling require("projectrc").require. How you set the PROJECTRC is up to you. For example, you can set it to the basename of the current working directory using the following bash alias:

alias nvim='PROJECTRC=$(basename $(pwd)); nvim'

The require("projectrc").require function takes a path to a directory containing multiple configuration files. Here it will first try to source the file with the name that corresponds to the PROJECTRC environment variable. If this fails, it will try to source the file default.lua. If this fails, the function returns nil by default.

Lets illustrate this with some examples.

• PROJECTRC is set to myproject.

Now when you call require("projectrc").require("/some/path") the following will happen:

• It will try to source the file /some/path/myproject.lua.
• If this fails, it will try to source the file /some/path/default.lua.
• If this fails, the function returns nil by default.

Lets assume you have the following directory structure:

nvim/
├── lua/
│   ├── config/lsp/
│   │   ├── init.lua      -> servers you always need.
│   │   ├── default.lua   -> default servers, no specific project settings.
│   │   └── myproject.lua -> specific servers for myproject.
│   │
... more files

In you config, when you want to source you lsp configuration, you would call:

• require("projectrc").require("config.lsp")

If you PROJECTRC is set to foo, the following will happen:

• config/lsp/init.lua will always be sourced.
• it will try to source config/lsp/foo.lua, but this file does not exist.
• as a fallback, it will source config/lsp/default.lua.

Now if you PROJECTRC is set to myproject, the following will happen:

• config/lsp/init.lua will always be sourced.
• it will try to source config/lsp/myproject.lua, and this file exists.

Note that in the last case, the default.lua file is not sourced.

In the example above, you would call the require("projectrc").require function using the package manager lazy as is explained below.

Lets assume you have the following project structure:

nvim/
├── lua/
│   ├── config/lsp/
│   │   ├── init.lua      -> servers you always need.
│   │   ├── default.lua   -> default servers, no specific project settings.
│   │   └── myproject.lua -> specific servers for myproject.
│   └── plugins/lsp.lua   -> containing the plugin spec.
... more files

where the plugins directory is added to the lazy.setup function: lazy.setup("plugins", {}). The plugins/lsp.lua may look as follows:

return {
    "neovim/nvim-lspconfig",
    config = function()
        require("projectrc").require("config.lsp")
    end
}

Similarly to the previous example, the config/lsp/init.lua will always be sourced. The myproject.lua file will be sourced if PROJECTRC is set to myproject, and the default.lua file will be sourced otherwise.

Sometimes you want your project specific settings to be sourced when you enter a file of a certain filetype. Lets say you want a textwidth of 100 for your myproject config, and a textwidth of 80 otherwise. Furthermore, this only needs to happen for python files. You can do this as follows.

We have the following directory structure:

nvim/
├── lua/
│   ├── after/ftplugin/
│   │   ├── python/
│   │   │   ├── init.lua      -> always sourced.
│   │   │   ├── default.lua   -> default settings.
│   │   │   └── myproject.lua -> specific settings.
... more files

where the lua/after directory needs to be appended to the runtimepath using the following command:

vim.opt.rtp:append("lua/after")

or when you use lazy you should use the opts:

lazy.setup("plugins", { performance = { rtp = { paths = { "lua/after" } } } })

now you can add the following to the init.lua file:

require("projectrc").require("after.ftplugin.python").setup()

make sure you wrap your configuration in a function as all files in a filetype directory are sourced, as is explained in :h ftplugin:

local M = {}

M.setup = function()
    -- your configuration here
end

return M

Now the following will happen:

• Set your PROJECTRC to myproject.
• Open a python file.
• The after/ftplugin/python/init.lua file will always be sourced.
• It will try to source after/ftplugin/python/myproject.lua, and this file exists. It will return a table with the setup function.
• You call the setup function, which will set your configuration.

The plugin can be configured on a global level but also on a function level.

The following global configuration options are available with their defaults:

require("projectrc").setup({
    -- The name of the environment variable that holds the project identifier.
    env = "PROJECTRC",
    -- The name of the file that is sourced when the project config is not found.
    fallback_file = "default.lua",
    -- The value that is returned when the `fallback_file` is not found.
    fallback_value = nil,
    -- Callback function that is called when the project config is not found.
    -- It must take the following tree arguments:
    -- - parent: the parent directory of the project config.
    -- - fallback_file: the name of the file to source, e.g., "default".
    -- - fallback_value: the value to return when the fallback file cannot be
    --   sourced.
    -- Note that the last two arguments can be configured using the options
    -- above.
    callback = require("projectrc").try_require
})

The callback needs some extra explanation. By the default, the require("projectrc").try_require function is used. However, you can replace this one with any function you like, as long as adheres to the following signature:

  function(opts.fallback_file, opts.fallback_value)
    -- Your custom logic here.
  end

For example, if you want to avoid sourcing the fallback_file for some specific project, you can do the following:

local function callback(...)
    local prc = require("projectrc")
    if prc.get_name() ~= "myproject" then
        return prc.try_require(...)
    end
end

Lastly, you can use the options discussed above to configure the behavior of only 1 function call to require("projectrc").require. This function accepts the same opts table that is passed to setup. For example:

require("projectrc").require("config.lsp", {
    fallback_file = "foo",
    fallback_value = {}
})

which will source the file config/lsp/foo.lua and return an empty table if this file does not exist. This only applies to this specific function call.

If you encounter any issues, please report them on the issue tracker at: projectrc issues

Contributions are welcome! Please see CONTRIBUTING for more information.

Distributed under the MIT License.