g:ackdefaultdir option

[lucapette]

I added this option because I don't like the idea of typing in the root of a project at every search. I find that Ack.vim is particularly useful when I can do project-searches. To be honest, I don't know if this is a good way of implementing it. It's working fine with me at the moment and I have done a pull-request just for sharing the idea. If you like it, I can do another commit with docs.

Thank you for the plugin!

[millermedeiros]

protip: if you cd to the project directory Ack will use it as the root directory, so no need to set a default directory or pass it as an argument at each call... (not sure if that solves your use case tho)

[rstacruz]

Yes. I think for the most part, this is unnecessary for the very reason @millermedeiros mentioned.

[lucapette]

@millermedeiros You're right obviously. I'm very familiar with this prototip but it doesn't consider the autochdir option that I need for other things. So, if you run, say, vi app/models/user.rb and you have set autochdir in your vimrc then a Ack.vim willl search in app/models by default.

I'm not saying it's a good idea to accept the pull request (It contains a bug I've just found out and I'm going to fix it) but maybe it could be useful to consider the idea behind my pull request.

[millermedeiros]

@lucapette I commented since other people may have a similar desire and not notice the default behavior (protip was just to point my comment was probably obvious), also because I couldn't understand why you need to config a defaultdir since every time I need to search inside different folders and cd is enough to me.

[lucapette]

Well, it looks like this won't be merged.

[gkoo]

FWIW, I have the autochdir option set and use it for :e and :vsp commands. I'd love an option to set a default directory specific to ackvim.

[vvzz]

It would be nice if Ack root dir worked similar to CtrlP 'ctrlp_working_path_mode' r option - automatically figuring out the root path

[gdw2]

I agree with @vvzz . I'm an autochdir user and also like how CtrlP determines the root path.

[noscripter]

+1 for this merge

[noscripter]

@lucapette maybe you should also give the default example of setting this option to the root of git or svn project root directory.

[ches]

@noscripter See #188 for my recent perspective on basically this same idea. There are a number of ways to skin this cat and I'm not convinced it's within the scope of the search plugin to solve it. Projectionist's :ProjectDo is likely a good option if you use that plugin.

One possibility is a variable convention like the one in this proposal, expanded by your own mapping or abbreviation that invokes an :Ack command with the path filled. Personally I would do this with a buffer-local variable and set that variable as desired via something like localvimrc for each project where I want it, or try to detect a .git if that's your use case (a global g: var is not the appropriate scope for this IMO, I might work on multiple "projects" within one Vim instance and twiddling a single global var then becomes a mess). This should be entirely doable by the user without the plugin needing any specific support for it, such is the beauty of Vim's scriptability.

I can understand how this could be helpful for 'autochdir' users, however (though some may want/expect exactly the opposite: for ack.vim to respect 'autochdir' just like :grep does…). If anyone cooks up a solution like this I'd be glad to include it as a recipe in documentation. If it turns out to be clean and simple enough I might consider including it, but I don't want something as complicated as CtrlP's configuration approach.