All plugins with empty dir are combined?

[jthvai]

Starting a discussion because I'm not sure if this is intended behaviour.

As of v11 (I'm not sure which minor version exactly, but I am currently on 0507e19, v11.9.0), the vast majority of plugin specs with dir = "" seem to be combined under the name of the last plugin with empty dir, with some exceptions.

repro.lua

-- DO NOT change the paths and don't remove the colorscheme
local root = vim.fn.fnamemodify("./.repro", ":p")

-- set stdpaths to use .repro
for _, name in ipairs({ "config", "data", "state", "cache" }) do
  vim.env[("XDG_%s_HOME"):format(name:upper())] = root .. "/" .. name
end

-- bootstrap lazy
local lazypath = root .. "/plugins/lazy.nvim"
if not vim.loop.fs_stat(lazypath) then
  vim.fn.system({ "git", "clone", "--filter=blob:none", "https://github.com/folke/lazy.nvim.git", lazypath, })
end
vim.opt.runtimepath:prepend(lazypath)

-- install plugins
local plugins = {
  "folke/tokyonight.nvim",
  -- add any other plugins here
  {
    dir = "",
    name = "lspconfig-texlab",
    ft = { "tex", "plaintex", "bib" },
    dependencies = "neovim/nvim-lspconfig",
    config = function(_, opts)
      require "lspconfig".texlab.setup(opts)
    end
  },

  {
    dir = "",
    name = "lspconfig-typstlsp",
    ft = "typst",
    dependencies = "neovim/nvim-lspconfig",
    config = function(_, opts)
      require "lspconfig".typst_lsp.setup(opts)
    end
  },

  {
    dir = "",
    name = "test-empty",
  },
}

require("lazy").setup(plugins, {
  root = root .. "/plugins",
})

vim.cmd.colorscheme("tokyonight")
-- add anything else here

Upon running nvim -u repro.lua, note that neither lspconfig-texlab nor lspconfig-typstlsp exist in the plugin list, but test-empty does and has all of the ft triggers of the prior 2 plugins. Additionally, after changing the filetype to typst and opening :LspInfo, note that typst_lsp does actually start up if it is installed - so it seems that the config functions were combined too.

There do appear to be some exceptions to this in my setup, for some reason - lua_ls, which I've defined as a dependency of lazydev; tailwindcss, a dep of tailwind-tools - the only common thread seems to be that these are deps of other plugins, but I couldn't reproduce the exception based on this. My full lspconfig plugin specs are here, and the remaining plugin specs are in the same directory.

Is this intended behaviour? If so, how should I create dummy plugins in v11?

[jthvai]

Might be tangentially related to #1588 (comment), particularly:

In general, you always should make sure your specs don't load any plugins and use closures where needed.

But I don't fully understand what was meant by this, or what the alternative is.

[folke]

What do you even want to achieve with an empty dir? There's literally nothing in the documentation that says this is valid

[jthvai]

My bad, I assumed an empty string is "defined" per "A valid spec should define one of [1], dir or url" - only because it worked as expected prior to v11.

I am currently using empty dir plugins to lazy load specific config functions for lspconfig based on filetype. As these represent language servers, it made more semantic sense for them to be "plugins" rather than autocommands (but if dummy plugins aren't valid I'll switch to using autocmds).

Edit: Also a couple of my language servers had deps of their own, so it was slightly more efficient to invoke those deps only on a specific filetype.

[jthvai]

(The provided repro.lua also does not complain nor error about an invalid plugin spec.)

[folke]

The spec is not invalid, an empty dir probably resolves to the current directory.
And yes, all specs from the same directory are merged in one.
If that didn't work like this before, then that was a bug.

[jthvai]

Thank you!