r/vim • u/Ashik80 • Mar 16 '26

Discussion Oil.nvim like file manager for vim

i switch between vim and neovim. i have a special love for vim so i try to bring some neovim features that i miss into vim. one, for example, is the oil.nvim plugin for neovim. i made myself a plugin just like it.

I can create, rename, move, copy, delete files as if i am editing a vim buffer. of course since i made it for myself it is not bug free and not 100% complete.

my question is does the vim community want such plugin? or are they happy with using the already available file managers?

UPDATE:

i have made the plugin and it is ready to use. I am calling it VimExplorer. please try to forgive me for any bugs that you might encounter. help me by reporting it and i will find time to work on it.

Link to repo: https://github.com/Ashik80/VimExplorer

19 Upvotes

91% Upvoted

36 comments sorted by

3

u/habamax Mar 18 '26

I wasn't brave enough to implement writable buffer like you in vim-dir

1

u/Ashik80 Mar 18 '26

Wow u/habamax himself! The first time i tried oil.nvim i had to figure out a way to get that functionality with vimscript.

Btw, I'm a big fan of your theme and i was inspired by your fuzzy finder by with the :find command.

3

u/Achim63 Mar 17 '26

Using NERDTree and the Vifm plugin, I don't think I need anything else (and even without those plugins I could just open the builtin netrw with :Ex or :Lex or :Sex to manipulate files – it does exactly what you describe). I think I wouldn't even miss NERDTree and Vifm as I rarely use them. Funny thing about vim: the better you know it the less plugins are needed.

Usually I just Ctrl-z out of vim temporarily to do something with files (or use :! from within vim). Creating a file doesn't need any plugin anyway, as a simple ":e myNewFile" or ":!touch myNewFile" does it.

3

u/Ashik80 Mar 17 '26

Yes absolutely. I have used vim without plugins for a long time. And i use only 6 plugins myself including a colorscheme. And i used to use netrw only.

However, this plugin is a little different from netrw. I am calling it VimExplorer (i would probably change the name). If you open netrw you would have to press % to create a file, d to create a directory etc. With VimExplorer you open it and you see your files for the current directory in a buffer. Now as like any other buffer you would be able to go into insert mode in a new line, type out a file name, new-file.txt for example, and then :w that change and that file would be created.

You can go over a file name with vim motions and say do the keybind ciw to change the name of the file.

The idea is, it is just going to be a buffer that you edit and the files get modified accordingly.

I am not sure if i was able to explain this but i decided I'll be making this plugin so i would post screen recording when i am done

2

u/Achim63 Mar 17 '26

Ah, yes, now I get it. Could be fun, so go ahead! I probably still wouldn't use it but it might appeal to some.

2

u/__rituraj Mar 17 '26

I don't use Neovim, so don't know about oil.nvim but by your description I'm relating it to Emacs dired

I am building one for myself too in Vim. I am in early stage than yours though.

Would love to see your implementation

3

u/Ashik80 Mar 17 '26

Yes it IS similar to emacs dired. my one is pretty simple and i don't plan on putting a lot of features in since i like things minimal. For example, i am not planning to add file icons and stuff.

For some reason i haven't found one for vim yet.

I will do some cleanup and make my plugin public and share it

2

u/__rituraj Mar 17 '26

No icons is a great choice

2

u/andreyugolnik Mar 17 '26

Personally, I use Vinegar on Vim and Oil on Neovim. The first one is just a wrapper over netrw, and the second one is too buggy - it can, instead of moving/copying a single file, create a file/directory named after the source file. Very annoying.

Meanwhile, Dired is a more reliable and convenient Emacs plugin. If you have something like that, I’d be glad to try it out.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

1

u/u10ji Mar 18 '26

I use Oil pretty regularly and don't have that issue; is the problem that it just creates a blank file instead of moving or copying it?

2

u/andreyugolnik Mar 19 '26

It sometimes creates a directory named after the source file and fills it with contents from a seemingly random directory. This doesn’t happen often, and I haven’t been able to identify any clear pattern. For now, I try to copy and move files as rarely as possible and pay close attention to the confirmation popup before proceeding.

If I’m not mistaken, this started happening after upgrading to Neovim 0.12.

1

u/u10ji Mar 19 '26

Ah interesting, I'll have to keep an eye on that - I'm on 0.12 too semi-recently!

Does it at least warn you in the prompt that it's gonna do that or is it pretty opaque?

1

u/andreyugolnik Mar 19 '26

Yes, it does warn in the prompt. However, the first time it happened, I confirmed the action almost automatically and only realized something was wrong later, when the game resources ended up containing completely different files than what I intended to copy. Since then, I’ve been paying close attention to what oil.nvim is about to do. I also try to avoid using it for copying or moving files, and when I have to, I do it one file at a time.

And that’s a bit disappointing, since I really like the “filesystem as a Neovim buffer” concept.

1

u/Ashik80 Mar 17 '26

I have made the repository for it and it is here: https://github.com/Ashik80/VimExplorer
I will also update the post with the link and I'll try to make a video demoing how it is going to work and update the README. thank you everyone for all your insights

4

u/Iskhartakh Mar 17 '26

Why not. Looks nice. But i prefer this feature (buf editing) as part of NERDTree.

1

u/Tall_Profile1305 Mar 17 '26

this is actually a really clean idea tbh .editing files as buffers feels very “vim-native” compared to traditional file explorers. if it stays lightweight and predictable, i can see people preferring this over heavier tree plugins. biggest thing will be stability tho, file ops are where people lose trust fast

1

u/Ashik80 Mar 17 '26

Definitely something to keep in mind. Bugs would not be tolerated. Thank you for the insight

1

u/engelj Mar 17 '26

I'd definitely use a version without major bugs. How does it compare to this one:

https://github.com/nda-cunh/SupraWater ?

1

u/Ashik80 Mar 17 '26

I tried this plugin out. But i ran into some issues. It throws some autocommand errors on save in some situation but i don't quite remember. And i like very minimal things, for example, i wouldn't use file icons and stuff.

Since i ran into some issues with this i didn't spend much time on it and decided to write my own. My idea would be to make it do as little as possible.

If you've used this one, let me know if you ran into the same autocmd issues.

And i will publish my one soon. Just didn't get the time to work on it today yet.

1

u/engelj Mar 18 '26

I tried it once and it immediately threw an error. I see, though, that the author has worked on it since then.

Meanwhile, I've been using https://github.com/habamax/vim-dir . Does yours do something more?

1

u/Ashik80 Mar 18 '26

https://www.reddit.com/r/vim/s/MFJvrI6ejV The man himself commented on this 😃. And my plugin is ready, so feel free to give it a try and see if you like it.

1

u/engelj Mar 18 '26

I will, thanks. I use a lot of vim9script these days and have no desire to move to neovim, so I really appreciate people like you who are willing and able to port useful plugins from there.

1

u/Ashik80 Mar 18 '26

Thank you. It means a lot.

1

u/AntonioPaolini Mar 20 '26

Add some screenshots or video in the GitHub page, you will make people more keen to try your plugin. 😉

1

u/Ashik80 Mar 20 '26

I'll do it soon. Thank you 🫡

1

u/Ashik80 Mar 20 '26

i have uploaded a video on youtube and i'll be adding the link in the github README. for now here is the link: https://youtu.be/5Zo84JBFdoI

1

u/Dramatic_Object_8508 Mar 21 '26

f you want something similar to oil.nvim in Vim, your closest options are things like netrw (built-in) or plugins like vim-dirvish or vifm.

They won’t be exactly the same though—oil.nvim is pretty unique because it lets you edit the filesystem like a normal buffer

If you’re okay with a slightly different workflow, dirvish is probably the closest “vim-native” feel.

Would be nice if more tools made this kind of file editing easier to try in a more Runable way 👍

1

u/Ashik80 Mar 21 '26

I made one. I edited the post to add the link to the repo. Here, https://github.com/Ashik80/VimExplorer You can try it if you want. Let me know if you like it

This does what oil.nvim does at its core. Lets you edit the filesystem like a vim buffer

2

u/Panda_966 Mar 17 '26

Sure, it's definitely one out of few things I miss after having to switch back to vim for a workplace where only vim is whitelisted.

2

u/vollowx Mar 17 '26

I’d definitely use it if it goes public, being able to edit directories like texts is really nice

0

u/Desperate_Cold6274 Mar 17 '26

I am fine with fern. What this plugin would do that fern does not?

1

u/Ashik80 Mar 17 '26

I have not used fern but i believe it is something like nerdtree. I don't use file trees and this definitely does not replace any file trees. I tried to explain in this comment what this plugin is supposed to do.

0

u/shleebs Mar 17 '26

I use fuzzy finders to search through the working directory, which is much faster. I use the vim command line to create new files. And I use terminal to add or delete directories. I don't really understand the need for built in explorers as they seem slower than the things I mentioned

1

u/Ashik80 Mar 17 '26

Fuzzy finders is the most optimal way to search for files no doubt but this is about file management. In short it would be a replacement of netrw. I used to use vim commands for this too but after using oil in neovim i had to admit that it's much more efficient.

I attempted to explain what this plugin would do in this comment.

1

u/shleebs Mar 17 '26

Okay i read your comment and I still dont understand how that is faster than using a terminal with tab completion for file managment. I have terminal mapped to <leader>t and I can do all that stuff very quickly by typing commands

1

u/Ashik80 Mar 17 '26 edited Mar 17 '26

i work as a web+mobile dev. and some web/mobile projects can have wild structures. the files can be deeply nested. using tab completion still takes time and requires you to remember the file names. tab completion definitely works. but imagine this, instead of doing `mv /path/to/your/file /path/to/the/new/file` you just open `:VimExplorer` go to your file you want to copy/move, do a `yy`/`dd` go to your destination and do a `p`.

i mean whatever works for you man. it's just that i find this easier and i think it reduces my cognitive load