Fixes #1281 - window-purpose layer

[bmag]

After using a private layer for two months, I've started working on a proper contrib layer for window-purpose. It is still a work-in-progress, and I'd like to hear any suggestions or questions you may have. Note that this PR doesn't try to replace anything currently in Spacemacs, just adds an optional layer that improves (IMHO) some parts of the window manager.

Here is what I've done or planning to do in this PR:

• enable window-purpose package and define some key bindings
• extend window-purpose to give the same behavior as popwin, so there's (almost?) no regression in behavior for users. See extension purpose-popwin.el.
• make window-purpose and popwin play together nicely without conflicts
• empty purpose-mode-map, because by default it overrides C-x C-f, C-x b, etc. and conflicts with semantic over C-c , key bindings.
• create a helm-mini-like helm command to use instead of purpose-switch-buffer-with-purpose and purpose-switch-buffer-with-some-purpose

Especially I'd appreciate advice about:

• how to write the helm commands - I've had some bugs when I tried, maybe someone else can give it a try?
• key bindings: I've used the SPC r prefix ("r" for "puRpose"), since it's relatively short and doesn't have many other bindings. Do you prefer I use different keys?
• extra purposes to configure for Spacemacs? I think the default purposes will be fine for now.
• window-purpose has commands for saving/loading a window layout to/from file. I'm not sure what other methods Spacemacs has for saving/loading a window layout, so I didn't do anything about it yet.

---

Some explanation about window-purpose: (no need to read if you're familiar with the package)

Basically, window-purpose is an alternative to the behavior of stock display-buffer and switch-to-buffer. When stock Emacs chooses a window for a buffer, it can either:

• reuse a window that already shows that buffer
• use some window that shows another buffer
• create a new window/frame

The problem is that with "use some window" it's hard to predict where the window will open. window-purpose adds another option: "reuse a window that shows another buffer that has the same purpose as the buffer that needs to be displayed." This makes the behavior more predictable and makes the window layout more robust.

Another thing that window-purpose allows is to dedicate a window to a purpose (rather than a single buffer). So if, for example, I dedicate a window to the purpose edit (default purpose for code files), Emacs will use it only for code files and I can safely think of it as my code window. Similarly I can have a REPL
window or any other type of window I may want - it's all customizable.

What's more, there's an equivalent for display-buffer-alist, so we can define special behaviors for different kinds of windows. The first thing that comes to mind is that we can define a single consistent language-agnostic behavior for all the different REPLs in Spacemacs.

Another short-coming of stock Emacs, IMHO, is that switch-to-buffer doesn't follow the rules in display-buffer. window-purpose enforces its rules also on switch-to-buffer. Of course there are still differences between switch-to-buffer, switch-to-buffer-other-window, switch-to-buffer-other-frame, pop-to-buffer, pop-to-buffer-same-window and display-buffer, but now they all use the same mechanism.

[rphillips]

Nice work... Do you know if this plays nice with eyebrowse?

[bmag]

I haven't started using eyebrowse yet, so I don't know. I hope it does. If it doesn't, I'll have to figure out something.

EDIT: a short test reveals that for the purpose-dedication state to be saved and restored when switching workspaces, you need to run this code:

(setq window-persistent-parameters (append '((purpose-dedicated . writable)) window-persistent-parameters))

That code should probably be added upstream to window-purpose.

[bmag]

This PR is ready to merge. Any questions, suggestions, objections, etc?

@rphillips it should play nice with eyebrowse now.

[tuhdo]

I'm really excited to try this out.

[bmag]

@tuhdo glad to hear that.

Found and fixed a minor issue with eyebrowse. Basically this layer is ready and usable, but it is likely some (currently unknown) packages will require some tweaking to work with it. I'm prepared to fix any such issues we might find.

[syl20bnr]

Added to milestone 0.105

[CestDiego]

I hope this works with perspectives layer as well x3

[robbyoconnor]

Any chance of rebasing this?

[bmag]

@CestDiego Most of what it does is to change the behavior of display-buffer and switch-to-buffer, so that shouldn't be a problem. There are a few purpose-related commands for switching buffers, which I think offer buffers from all perspectives as candidates. IIRC there is a with-perspective-buffers (or similar) macro that could be used to wrap those commands.
Other than that, window-purpose can save and restore layouts. It doesn't save the actual buffers, but it remembers the purpose of each window. When loading a layout, it looks for a suitable buffer to show in each window. I think that also here the buffers won't be limited to the current perspective, and it needs to be wrapped with the same macro.
There may be some issues with the window layout when switching perspectives, depending on the implementation in persp-mode. If it's done the same way as eyebrowse (IOW by using window-state-put) then it should be fine.
There could be more, but I'm pretty sure that's all.

@robbyoconnor Will rebase it later today or tomorrow, but right now I don't have time

[bmag]

rebased and squashed

[robbyoconnor]

👍 ❤️

[fatlazycat]

@bmag hi, tried your PR as a private layer but failed to pass the tests when loading. Should it be fine ?

[bmag]

@fatlazycat what tests are you referring to? I am also using it as a private layer, without a problem. Perhaps it's an installation issue?

[fatlazycat]

@bmag odd must have been PEBKAC, tried it again and loaded fine. Thanks.

[tuhdo]

@bmag You should integrate window-purpose with helm-find-files. Current purpose-find-file has no action menu for i.e. searching with C-s.

[robbyoconnor]

👍
On 12/02/2015 10:24 PM, Tu Do wrote:

@bmag https://github.com/bmag You should integrate |window-purpose|
with |helm-find-files|. Current |purpose-find-file| has no action menu
for i.e. searching with |C-s|.

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Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHub
#1958 (comment).

[bmag]

@tuhdo I think you meant purpose-switch-buffer, in which case I agree. I plan to write some helm sources for the window-purpose package, but it's a low priority for me and I'm very busy with non-Emacs related stuff these days, so it's not coming soon, sorry.
On the good side, this layer (not the package) does add a helm source that inherits from helm-buffers-list, and binds it to SPC r b, so that one should have the same action menu, including C-s.

[bmag]

updated and rebased

[a13ph]

This is very very nice.
And it plays well with my ideas about persistent help window (think discoverability to the max and constant reminder/cheatsheet).
So i'll definitely play around with it at some point and try to think of some useful purposes for it

[onemanstartup]

I want to use this for tdd. Right now I'm learning emacs and run ert tests and it opens new buffer and I need to type 'q' to quit because it switches focus. Does anyone know how to run command and NOT switch buffers? Or some solution to stay in buffer where I'm writing code?

[nixmaniack]

@onemanstartup You can use popwin config for this.

(push '("*YourBufferName*"          :dedicated t :position bottom :stick t :noselect t   :height 0.4) popwin:special-display-config)

Replace *YourBufferName* accordingly. This would popup buffer at bottom and won't be selected by default. You can use C-g or SPC w p p to close it.

[d12frosted]

This is awesome! Thanks for sharing!

[trishume]

This is a really great addition and will really improve the user experience of Spacemacs. I actually might even suggest that this be added by default in new .spacemacs files.

When I switched back to using Spacemacs for work recently the window opening behavior constantly clobbering buffers is a constant annoyance. I remembered talk of window-purpose from back when I first used Spacemacs and thought "that must be included by now" but alas it still was not.

Although this may in fact be an effective strategy for getting me to contribute to Spacemacs again. Since I have to use Spacemacs for work, eventually I may get so annoyed at the window opening behavior that if someone tells me what is needed to get this merged, I'll do it myself some weekend.

[nixmaniack]

I've been using this layer since past 6+ months and without this I find window management out of place. It would be very important addition if we can get this in upcoming 0.200 release.

[CestDiego]

<3

On Tue, Sep 20, 2016, 2:30 PM Muneeb Shaikh notifications@github.com
wrote:

I've been using this layer since past 6+ months and without this I find
window management out of place. It would be very important addition if we
can get this in upcoming 0.200 release.

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Diego Berrocal
http://cestdiego.github.io

[syl20bnr]

This is planned for the next release. It was originally planned for something like 0.104 but each time there were additional stuff stepping in so I had to delay it.

[syl20bnr]

@trishume I don't think there is much to do to have it merged except waiting for the 0.200 release, moreover @bmag is the author of this package so we have already the best person to handle this ;-)

[syl20bnr]

@trishume welcome back by the way :-D

[bmag]

Updated the PR with ivy-purpose support and rebased. FYI the layer in this PR is a copy of the layer from my config (see here), and from time to time I update this PR.

[d12frosted]

@bmag this is so lovely. My favourite and long waited PR. Thank you for window-purpose and this layer (lawyer) 😸 💃

[trishume]

I've been using this layer for a day and I may have found a fairly annoying bug. It seems that the paste transient state confuses window purpose some but not all of the time and replaces the contents of the buffer you are pasting in with the hydra docstring. Yes, the buffer, you have to use u to get the contents back. It also tries to kill your buffer when it exits the hydra and you but the prompt to save the changed contents allows you to stop it.

[bmag]

@trishume I've seen something like this about 1-2 weeks ago, but wasn't sure if it's because of window-purpose or not, and couldn't find out a pattern. Can you reproduce the problem reliably? Does the problem go away if you run M-x purpose-x-kill-unset?

[trishume]

@bmag I'll try and figure out how to reproduce it reliably and let you know if I do. After I restart my emacs because it's completely hung, as happens near-daily. My return to Spacemacs/emacs has not been going smoothly so far...

[bmag]

@trishume I figured out how to trigger the bug, I should have a fix today or tomorrow

[trishume]

@bmag cool. Meanwhile it's started happening to me every time making it really difficult to paste, and purpose-x-kill-unset doesn't help, so I'm gonna disable window-purpose until then.

[bmag]

@trishume turns out Hydra's buffer name changed two weeks ago, so I had to update it in window-purpose as well (the name is hard-coded in Hydra). Fixed it, new version will be available from MELPA in a few hours.

[syl20bnr]

One of the oldest PR :-D
It is now in develop !
I renamed the layer to spacemacs-purpose and it is added automatically with the spacemacs distribution.
I made a couple a fixes in separate commits, please check the history to see if I did mistake.

Thank you ! 💯 💜
Cherry-picked into develop branch, you can safely delete your branch.

[d12frosted]

Woooo... it's in! 🎉 🎉 🎉

[bmag]

I (and also @nixmaniack) found only one error, and @TheBB already fixed it with #7441. I'll go over my personal config and check if there's something worth adding that wasn't in this PR.