buffer-local parens?

[wavexx]

Is it possible to add a pair just for the current buffer?

By skimming through the source, it looks like most of the relevant variables are already buffer-local, though calling (sp-pair) from within a mode hook results in emacs going crazy.

The reason behind this is having complex modes such as ess-mode do "the right thing"(tm) depending on the real language being used. Unfortunately, the major-mode is always "ess-mode", thought the underlying language could vary (R, SAS, Julia...). Several hooks are provided by ess for this reason.

I'm also baffled as of why (sp-local-pair) requires a mode. Wouldn't be more simple to make (sp-local-pair) simply work on buffer-local variables and just call it from a hook, like most other minor modes do?

[Fuco1]

What is simple is for everyone to decide. sp-local-pair requires mode because that's how I prefer it to work, no other reason.

As for the question, it's not possible. You can work around that by adding predicates using the :when argument testing for currently used language or something you can decide on.

This is suboptimal, I agree. I'm redesigning the UI once again for the next version, I will make sure this issue (of adding buffer-local pairs) is addressed. Currently, there is no UI for that. The pairs can have complex dependencies and inheritance and this is resolved each time major-mode is changed. You can of course replace the data structures manually, but there's too much state to do that reliably.

In the next version, there will definitely be no sp-pair and sp-local-pair or sp-local-tag. One function to set up everything is enough. There will be support for named configurations as well, so you can do something like (sp-pair :name 'ess-mode-julia ....) and then load it in your hook with (sp-load-pairs 'ess-mode-julia). If the name is major mode, it will get loaded automatically.

However, the release date is probably quite far.

[wavexx]

Using :when though will not stop highlighting, only autoinsertion.

[Fuco1]

If you test for the navigate action, that will disable both navigation
and highlighting.

[Fuco1]

This is now implemented, see the documentation: http://smartparens.readthedocs.io/en/latest/pair-management.html#named-pair-definitions-buffer-local