nvim-remote

Neovim was rewritten to be more modular than Vim. It comes with a fancy API that lead to reduced code size in the core, but also obsoleted some often used features.

One of those features is the --remote family of command-line arguments, which is used to communicate with server instances.

But fear no more! nvim-remote acts as a wrapper for nvim and emulates these missing features. If none of the emulated arguments were given, it simply starts nvim with all other arguments.

Thus you could make this wrapper a real nvim replacement à la alias nvim=nvim-remote.py, if you like.

Hint: Technically every nvim instance is a server instance. If you want to use an already running nvim process as the server, use :echo v:servername to get the path to the unix socket used for communication. Afterwards do:

export NVIM_LISTEN_ADDRESS=/path/to/unix/socket

This way you can omit --servername in subsequent calls to nvim-remote.py.

Installation

Assuming ~/bin is in your $PATH:

1) Install the Neovim host for Python:

$ pip3 install neovim

2a) Using the git repo:

$ mkdir -p ~/github
$ git clone https://github.com/mhinz/nvim-remote.git ~/github/nvim-remote
$ ln -s ~/github/nvim-remote/nvim-remote.py ~/bin/nvim-remote.py

2b) Download the script directly:

$ # Or alternatively:
$ curl -Lo ~/bin/nvim-remote.py https://raw.githubusercontent.com/mhinz/nvim-remote/master/nvim-remote.py

3)

$ chmod 700 ~/bin/nvim-remote.py

Examples

In one window, create the server instance:

$ nvim-remote.py --servername /tmp/nvimsocket

In another window do this:

$ # Spares us from using --servername all the time:
$ export NVIM_LISTEN_ADDRESS=/tmp/nvimsocket
$ # Open 2 files in the server:
$ nvim-remote.py --remote file1 --remote file2
$ # Send keys to the current buffer of the server:
$ # Enter insert mode, enter 'abc', and go back to normal mode again:
$ nvim-remote.py --remote-send 'iabc<esc>'
$ # Evaluate any VimL expression.
$ # Get all listed buffers:
$ nvim-remote.py --remote-expr "join(sort(map(filter(range(bufnr('$')), 'buflisted(v:val)'), 'bufname(v:val)')), "\""\n"\"")"
.config/git/config
vim/vimrc
zsh/.zprofile

The help shows all supported arguments:

$ nvim-remote.py -h
usage: ./nvim-remote.py [arguments]

nvim wrapper that provides --remote and friends.

optional arguments:
  -h, --help            show this help message and exit
  --remote <file>       open file in new buffer [ASYNC]
  --remote-wait <file>  as --remote [SYNC]
  --remote-silent <file>
                        as --remote, but don't throw error if no server is
                        found [ASYNC]
  --remote-wait-silent <file>
                        as --remote, but don't throw error if no server is
                        found [SYNC]
  --remote-tab <file>   open file in new tab [SYNC]
  --remote-send <keys>  send keys to server [SYNC]
  --remote-expr <expr>  evaluate expression and print result [SYNC]
  --servername <sock>   path to unix socket (overrides $NVIM_LISTEN_ADDRESS)

Happy hacking!