Use relative paths when previewing file locations

[chaucerbao]

Absolute paths can be long and repetitive, and cause the more interesting details (in a file location preview) to be truncated. Instead, display file locations relative to the current working directory.

[chaucerbao]

Linter is failing with:

autoload/ale/preview.vim:54 Do not use getcwd(), as it could run from the wrong buffer. Use expand('#' . a:buffer . ':p:h') instead.

But we (probably) don't want the results relative to specific buffer; we want it relative to the current working directory, which is precisely what getcwd() provides.

@w0rp is there a better way around this?

[w0rp]

Use a " no-custom-checks comment at the end of line to ignore the warning about getcwd().

These changes completely replace absolute paths with relative paths. Instead of doing that, add options to the commands for showing relative paths, like :ALEExampleCommand -relative, and show absolute paths by default.

[chaucerbao]

I added an optional use_relative_paths flag to the ale#preview#ShowSelection() function to enable the display of relative paths, defaulting to absolute paths.

" Absolute paths
ale#preview#ShowSelection([])
ale#preview#ShowSelection([], { 'use_relative_paths': 0 })

" Relative paths
ale#preview#ShowSelection([], { 'use_relative_paths': 1 })

But I'm not familiar with how to parse a -relative option from an ex-command, and then, the best way to pass that through multiple function calls to reach ale#preview#ShowSelection()

1. ale#references#Find()
2. s:FindReferences()
3. s:OnReady
   1. ale#references#HandleTSServerResponse
   2. ale#references#HandleLSPResponse
4. ale#preview#ShowSelection

[w0rp]

See :help command. You can pass <args> or similar to a function and parse the string for options. You can access the raw string for the options and parse it.

[w0rp]

Instead of modifying a script variable, pass the options in here. Forward that on to the OnReady function. You can then save the options in s:references_map. You can write let l:options = remove(s:references_map, a:response.id) above to get the options out at the end.

[chaucerbao]

Thanks for pointing me in the right direction. I applied your solution and added tests.

Lemme know if there's anything else I can do to clean up (or correct) the code.

[w0rp]

Cheers! 🍻