Can I send signal from Neovim to trigger action in Zig? about znvim

[jinzhongjia]

This can effectively divide some tasks into additional processes. Exposing additional unixsockets or sockets and named pipes to the outside world, which is not safe in my opinion.

[jinzhongjia]

If this is the case, then using restapi is indeed the best solution

[jinzhongjia]

In theory, this is possible, but you probably need to use Lua as the callback of the key mapping to pass the message to Zig

[jinzhongjia]

Can you explain in detail your specific demand scenario?

[ziontee113]

Thank you for responding. Let's imagine this scenario:

1. I open a Neovim session with a named pipe: nvim --listen ./nvim.pipe
2. I press a keymap in Neovim, let's say <C-S-o>.
3. My already running Zig application receives the signal and connect to that particular Neovim instance.

I could maybe implement a simple REST API in Zig to listen to calls from Neovim. But I'm wondering if there's a more efficient way to achieve the same thing.
Thank you very much.

[jinzhongjia]

If you just start a zig instance to connect to neovim, most current solutions start external programs as sub-processes, and use the stdio of the sub-process for communication.

[ziontee113]

I used to do the same thing when I was working with Go.
I would set up a REST API, and Neovim just use curl to send JSON payload to the REST end point.

[jinzhongjia]

For example, coc.nvim, it starts a child process to communicate with it

[jinzhongjia]

In short, all kinds of neovim remote clients need to connect to neovim through stdio or named pipe or socket.

[ziontee113]

For example, coc.nvim, it starts a child process to communicate with it

Thank you. I'm still very confused of how it works but I'll look into it 👍

[jinzhongjia]

The channels supported by neovim include socket, named pipe, or stdio (start a child process and directly use the stdio of the child process to communicate with it)
The communication protocol can optionally use the msgpackrpc protocol.

[jinzhongjia]

https://neovim.io/doc/user/api.html#rpc-connecting
https://neovim.io/doc/user/channel.html#channel-intro

[ziontee113]

Would that work if the user start nvim regularly in a terminal or in tmux? 🤔

[ziontee113]

Since in this case the terminal / tmux spawns the nvim process, not our Zig program.

[jinzhongjia]

Of course it can run normally, you just need to let neovim's configuration file actively start a jobstart.

[jinzhongjia]

Of course, maintaining an additional restapi as you mentioned before is also a solution.

[jinzhongjia]

When started as a child process, the zig instance will be in the same life cycle as neovim

[ziontee113]

When started as a child process, the zig instance will be in the same life cycle as neovim

Ah... so something like coc.nvim was started as child process, from Neovim, via jobstart.
However, I'm trying to connect to a Zig daemon that's already running 🤔, kinda like Emacs.
So.... I think the REST API might be the way to go.. Since spawning a big heavy GUI program every time Neovim is opened seems undesirable.

[ziontee113]

However, security is a concern, since I'd have to expose a named pipe / port 🤔

[ziontee113]

Thank you so much for all the answers. 🙏
I'll go with the restapi solution.