Advice on echom informational logging

[Paul Jolly]

Hi all,

I would like to kindly ask for some advice on how to do informational
logging in Vim.

When govim (https://github.com/myitcv/govim) starts up, it checks
whether it needs to "go install" a new version of the Go part of the
plugin, as well as gopls (the LSP server).

In order to keep the user informed (because otherwise things would
just appear to hang), I echom a message:

:echom "Installing govim and gopls"
:call feedkeys(" ") " to prevent press ENTER to continue

(source: https://github.com/myitcv/govim/blob/c14a323551a641734eaef3c70cee9bd21e862d18/plugin/govim.vim#L298-L299)

Notice the "hack" to prevent the "press ENTER to continue" prompt. I
did this because it seemed impossible/contradictory to me to use
:silent with :echom.

I follow a similar approach for sharing the location of two key
logfiles (govim is still relatively immature, so referring to these
happens more often than is desirable).

What's annoying about this approach (beyond the fact that it feels
like a hack) is that when I quit vim it leaves a couple of lines of
artefacts as output in terminal:

$ vi
Vim channel logfile: /tmp/vim_channel_log_20190612_1700_11_poZWE0oDJxp3
Press ENTER or type command to continue

Does anyone have any pointers/advice on how to do this better?

Many thanks,


Paul

[Bram Moolenaar]

This is what popup_notification() is for. It's not implemented yet
though. By default it shows a message for three seconds. Maybe I'll
implement a way to close it, so you can keep it up longer.

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[Paul Jolly]

> This is what popup_notification() is for. It's not implemented yet
> though. By default it shows a message for three seconds. Maybe I'll
> implement a way to close it, so you can keep it up longer.

Thanks, Bram.

I need these messages to appear as the plugin/govim.vim file is being
sourced (because that's when the installation is carried out, if
necessary). Based on what I've seen so far, the Vim "window" is not
visible at this point, I'm effectively still in bash prompt world.
Does that make sense?

[Bram Moolenaar]

Well, then perhaps use a shell command?

silent !echo read this message

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[Paul Jolly]

> Well, then perhaps use a shell command?
>
> silent !echo read this message

For some reason, using this approach I don't actually see the message
(I just get a blank terminal) until I quit Vim, i.e. I don't see it at
the critical time immediately before the install is attempted.

I think for now I'm going to only use this echom + feedkeys hack when
installing the Go programs; I'll just have a simple command that the
user can invoke to echom the log file locations. That should keep the
noise down.

Thanks for the thoughts and suggestions in any case.