vim-symlink fails with 'autocmd nesting too deep' when opening help files with a symlinked config directory

[andrewferrier]

Thanks for all your hard work on this great plugin! Unfortunately, I've found an annoying corner case which I've hit which affects my usage of help files.

Recreation steps:

• Use Neovim 0.4.3 (I suspect this will happen with other versions and regular Vim also, but I haven't tested).

• Remove ~/.config/nvim if exists. Create a directory elsewhere (e.g. /tmp/test and symlink - cd ~/.config && ln -s /tmp/test nvim.

• Copy the contents of this file into ~/.config/nvim as init.vim:

echom system('git clone https://github.com/kristijanhusak/vim-packager ' . $HOME . '/.config/nvim/pack/packager/opt/vim-packager')

packadd vim-packager
call packager#init()
call packager#add('kristijanhusak/vim-packager', { 'type': 'opt' })
call packager#add('moll/vim-bbye') " needed for vim-symlink
call packager#add('junegunn/fzf', { 'do': './install --bin' })
call packager#add('junegunn/fzf.vim')
call packager#add('aymericbeaumet/vim-symlink')
call packager#install()

• Load neovim and wait for package installation to complete. Quit and restart. Ignore error about existing directory, I don't think it's relevant.

• Type :help fzf. Expect that help loads. Instead see errors like this:

Error detected while processing function <SNR>29_on_buf_read[11]..<SNR>28_bdelete:
line   27:
E218: autocommand nesting too deep
E218: autocommand nesting too deep
E218: autocommand nesting too deep
Error detected while processing function <SNR>29_on_buf_read:
line   11:
E171: Missing :endif

Some observations:

• I have created the above minimal setup to provide easier recreation; this happens with my full Neovim init.vim and other config also (I know the symlink is a bit unusual but I keep my config under source control so have symlinked it to elsewhere). I don't think it's that uncommon ;)

• I don't think the fact that it's FZF is relevant; it appears this happens with any help file installed in ~/.config/nvim/pack.

• It does not happen if ~/.config/nvim is not a symlink; if it's a regular directory the help is loaded as expected.

• If you remove vim-bbye from the recreation init.vim, the help loads. However, this prevents vim -o working correctly with multiple files; only one window is opened.

[andrewferrier]

Let me know if there's anything else I can do to help debug...

[andrewferrier]

If you're interested, I've created a workaround for this issue in my fork here: https://github.com/andrewferrier/vim-symlink/commit/0c037b5891dde98c87f99eaa9cecc3b569b22c1e. It's probably not a proper fix, but it works for me for now.