[mini.statusline] Stop overriding the laststatus user option?

[ro0gr]

Right now, by default mini.statusline overrides the laststatus option and sets it to be 2. This kinda of makes sense cause if you have a statusline plugin, you probably do not want the statusline being hidden.. However, I find this behavior confusing, cause it does silently overide an exlicit user configuration.

Some background

I use the https://github.com/nvim-lua/kickstart.nvim, which includes the mini.statusline as a plugin enabled by default. I didn't even know that I use this plugin, until I realized my laststatus option set to 3 is not respected anymore. Note, it worked fine after re-sourcing my config but then it just silently(and that's where I believe the problem is) stopped working after I reload my neovim instance. So for some time I didn't even realize I have my laststatus broken.

Since the kickstart.nvim does not have any preferences on the laststatus, I assume it's not the kickstart.nvim responsibility to make a decisiion about the set_vim_settings option.

What's the issue

My first attempt to address the issue was to respect the laststatus=3 echasnovski/mini.statusline#1. However, now I think the problem is really about mutating the laststatus at the first place.

The current behavior makes configuring the laststatus in config pointless for the user. At the same time if I change the option via command line the value gets applied properly, so I can still hide the statusbar. This feels incosistent.

I understand that there is a special explanation for the laststatus=3 in the README. However, isn't it better if we don't need configuration for this at all?

Suggestion

I'd like the plugin to not mutate the users global settings, and provide a user with an informative feedback in case of the "wrong" laststatus is detected on editor startup.

As far as I can tell the plugin works just fine with either laststatus=2 and laststatus=3. So we could whitelist them and do nothing if one of them is recognized. Otherwise, we could just warn the user that the laststatus he has specified in the nvim config does not work nice with the plugin.

Alternatively, instead of allowing "good" laststatus values we could maintain a list of "bad" values. However, it might cause issues with forward compatibility in case if new possible values would be added by the nvim in the future.

[ro0gr]

If the suggestion gets some support, I will work PR with a pleasure.

[echasnovski]

Thanks for the suggestion!

I already gave the answer in echasnovski/mini.statusline#1:

The documentation unambiguously and explicitly says what to do if user wants to use laststatus = 3. I think the current behavior is fine.

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The current behavior makes configuring the laststatus in config pointless for the user.

It does not. If user wants to use laststatus = 3, it is as straightforward as:

vim.o.laststatus = 3
require('mini.statusline').setup({ set_vim_settings = false })

I'd like the plugin to not mutate the users global settings, and provide a user with an informative feedback in case of the "wrong" laststatus is detected on editor startup.

One of the main design goals of 'mini.nvim' modules is to make them work as much as reasonably possible after a single require('mini.xxx').setup(). Not ensuring proper laststatus goes against this.

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At the moment, I don't think there is a need to change anything. But I'll take some time to maybe rethink.

[ro0gr]

Thanks for your reply!

Not arguing here, and I can definitely live with whatever is decided here, cause I found the reason of my confusion already. But I think this is not straightforward at all, and let me have another try to explain it from a slightly other angle:

Let's ignore my kickstart usecase(maybe not only mine) for a moment, and say I have the mini.statusline(and many others) installed for some time and working fine. Then, someday I decide to experiment with a plain neovim option for the laststatus. But suddenly it does not work. And now I have to figure out the plugin in the equation and do the special treatment from the README to disable the mutation behavior.

Just trying to explain what's wrong IMO and why it isn't straighforward to have a dedicated option to restore the default neovim behavior.

[echasnovski]

Thanks again for the suggestion!

After thinking about it, making set_vim_settings be "ensure that statusline is always visible" is closer to what it was originally designed to do. So now on latest main branch its default true value results in setting laststatus=2 only if it was 0 (never show) or 1 (show if there are more than one window).

[ro0gr]

Awesome! Thanks for the change 👍