Problem: cannot perform autocompletion
Solution: Add the 'autocomplete' option value
(Girish Palya)
This change introduces the 'autocomplete' ('ac') boolean option to
enable automatic popup menu completion during insert mode. When enabled,
Vim shows a completion menu as you type, similar to pressing |i\_CTRL-N|
manually. The items are collected from sources defined in the
'complete' option.
To ensure responsiveness, this feature uses a time-sliced strategy:
- Sources earlier in the 'complete' list are given more time.
- If a source exceeds its allocated timeout, it is interrupted.
- The next source is then started with a reduced timeout (exponentially
decayed).
- A small minimum ensures every source still gets a brief chance to
contribute.
The feature is fully compatible with other |i_CTRL-X| completion modes,
which can temporarily suspend automatic completion when triggered.
See :help 'autocomplete' and :help ins-autocompletion for more details.
To try it out, use :set ac
You should see a popup menu appear automatically with suggestions. This
works seamlessly across:
- Large files (multi-gigabyte size)
- Massive codebases (:argadd thousands of .c or .h files)
- Large dictionaries via the `k` option
- Slow or blocking LSP servers or user-defined 'completefunc'
Despite potential slowness in sources, the menu remains fast,
responsive, and useful.
Compatibility: This mode is fully compatible with existing completion
methods. You can still invoke any CTRL-X based completion (e.g.,
CTRL-X CTRL-F for filenames) at any time (CTRL-X temporarily
suspends 'autocomplete'). To specifically use i_CTRL-N, dismiss the
current popup by pressing CTRL-E first.
---
How it works
To keep completion snappy under all conditions, autocompletion uses a
decaying time-sliced algorithm:
- Starts with an initial timeout (80ms).
- If a source does not complete within the timeout, it's interrupted and
the timeout is halved for the next source.
- This continues recursively until a minimum timeout (5ms) is reached.
- All sources are given a chance, but slower ones are de-prioritized
quickly.
Most of the time, matches are computed well within the initial window.
---
Implementation details
- Completion logic is mostly triggered in `edit.c` and handled in
insexpand.c.
- Uses existing inc_compl_check_keys() mechanism, so no new polling
hooks are needed.
- The completion system already checks for user input periodically; it
now also checks for timer expiry.
---
Design notes
- The menu doesn't continuously update after it's shown to prevent
visual distraction (due to resizing) and ensure the internal list
stays synchronized with the displayed menu.
- The 'complete' option determines priority—sources listed earlier get
more time.
- The exponential time-decay mechanism prevents indefinite collection,
contributing to low CPU usage and a minimal memory footprint.
- Timeout values are intentionally not configurable—this system is
optimized to "just work" out of the box. If autocompletion feels slow,
it typically indicates a deeper performance bottleneck (e.g., a slow
custom function not using `complete_check()`) rather than a
configuration issue.
---
Performance
Based on testing, the total roundtrip time for completion is generally
under 200ms. For common usage, it often responds in under 50ms on an
average laptop, which falls within the "feels instantaneous" category
(sub-100ms) for perceived user experience.
| Upper Bound (ms) | Perceived UX
|----------------- |-------------
| <100 ms | Excellent; instantaneous
| <200 ms | Good; snappy
| >300 ms | Noticeable lag
| >500 ms | Sluggish/Broken
---
Why this belongs in core:
- Minimal and focused implementation, tightly integrated with existing
Insert-mode completion logic.
- Zero reliance on autocommands and external scripting.
- Makes full use of Vim’s highly composable 'complete' infrastructure
while avoiding the complexity of plugin-based solutions.
- Gives users C native autocompletion with excellent responsiveness and
no configuration overhead.
- Adds a key UX functionality in a simple, performant, and Vim-like way.
closes: #17812
Signed-off-by: Girish Palya <girishji@gmail.com>
Signed-off-by: Christian Brabandt <cb@256bit.org>
Problem: not possible to anchor specific lines in difff mode
Solution: Add support for the anchoring lines in diff mode using the
'diffanchor' option (Yee Cheng Chin).
Adds support for anchoring specific lines to each other while viewing a
diff. While lines are anchored, they are guaranteed to be aligned to
each other in a diff view, allowing the user to control and inform the
diff algorithm what the desired alignment is. Internally, this is done
by splitting up the buffer at each anchor and run the diff algorithm on
each split section separately, and then merge the results back for a
logically consistent diff result.
To do this, add a new "diffanchors" option that takes a list of
`{address}`, and a new "diffopt" option value "anchor". Each address
specified will be an anchor, and the user can choose to use any type of
address, including marks, line numbers, or pattern search. Anchors are
sorted by line number in each file, and it's possible to have multiple
anchors on the same line (this is useful when doing multi-buffer diff).
Update documentation to provide examples.
This is similar to Git diff's `--anchored` flag. Other diff tools like
Meld/Araxis Merge also have similar features (called "synchronization
points" or "synchronization links"). We are not using Git/Xdiff's
`--anchored` implementation here because it has a very limited API
(it requires usage of the Patience algorithm, and can only anchor
unique lines that are the same across both files).
Because the user could anchor anywhere, diff anchors could result in
adjacent diff blocks (one block is directly touching another without a
gap), if there is a change right above the anchor point. We don't want
to merge these diff blocks because we want to line up the change at the
anchor. Adjacent diff blocks were first allowed when linematch was
added, but the existing code had a lot of branched paths where
line-matched diff blocks were handled differently. As a part of this
change, refactor them to have a more unified code path that is
generalized enough to handle adjacent diff blocks correctly and without
needing to carve in exceptions all over the place.
closes: #17615
Signed-off-by: Yee Cheng Chin <ychin.git@gmail.com>
Signed-off-by: Christian Brabandt <cb@256bit.org>
Problem: documentation issues with Wayland
(after v9.1.1485)
Solution: Tweak documentation style. Capitalize the first letter of
Wayland (Hirohito Higashi)
related: #17619
Signed-off-by: Hirohito Higashi <h.east.727@gmail.com>
Signed-off-by: Christian Brabandt <cb@256bit.org>
Problem: missing Wayland clipboard support
Solution: make it work (Foxe Chen)
fixes: #5157closes: #17097
Signed-off-by: Foxe Chen <chen.foxe@gmail.com>
Signed-off-by: Christian Brabandt <cb@256bit.org>
Problem: quickfix and location-list stack is limited to 10 items
Solution: add the 'chistory' and 'lhistory' options to configure a
larger quickfix/location list stack
(64-bitman)
closes: #16920
Co-authored-by: Hirohito Higashi <h.east.727@gmail.com>
Signed-off-by: 64-bitman <60551350+64-bitman@users.noreply.github.com>
Signed-off-by: Christian Brabandt <cb@256bit.org>
Problem: Unable to persistently ignore events in a window and its buffers.
Solution: Add 'eventignorewin' option to ignore events in a window and buffer
(Luuk van Baal)
Add the window-local 'eventignorewin' option that is analogous to
'eventignore', but applies to a certain window and its buffers. Identify
events that should be allowed in 'eventignorewin', adapt "auto_event"
and "event_tab" to encode this information. Window context is not passed
onto apply_autocmds_group(), and when to ignore an event is a bit
ambiguous when "buf" is not "curbuf", rather than a large refactor, only
ignore an event when all windows into "buf" are ignoring the event.
closes: #16530
Signed-off-by: Luuk van Baal <luukvbaal@gmail.com>
Signed-off-by: Christian Brabandt <cb@256bit.org>
Problem: 'findexpr' can't be used for lambads
(Justin Keyes)
Solution: Replace the findexpr option with the findfunc option
(Yegappan Lakshmanan)
related: #15905closes: #15976
Signed-off-by: Yegappan Lakshmanan <yegappan@yahoo.com>
Signed-off-by: Christian Brabandt <cb@256bit.org>
Problem: Cannot keep a buffer focused in a window
(Amit Levy)
Solution: Add the 'winfixbuf' window-local option
(Colin Kennedy)
fixes: #6445closes: #13903
Signed-off-by: Colin Kennedy <colinvfx@gmail.com>
Signed-off-by: Christian Brabandt <cb@256bit.org>
Problem: Cannot debug the Kitty keyboard protocol with TermDebug.
Solution: Add Kitty keyboard protocol support to the libvterm fork.
Recognize the escape sequences that the protocol generates. Add
the 'keyprotocol' option to allow the user to specify for which
terminal what protocol is to be used, instead of hard-coding this.
Add recognizing the kitty keyboard protocol status.
Problem: The 'splitscroll' option is not a good name.
Solution: Rename 'splitscroll' to 'splitkeep' and make it a string option,
also supporting "topline". (Luuk van Baal, closes#11258)
Problem: When opening/closing window text moves up/down.
Solution: Add the 'splitscroll' option. When off text will keep its
position as much as possible.
