ckipp01
commented
8 months ago Hey @drybalka, so there is actually a few different relevant things at play here. In theory, metals can already do this. For example this is how the VS Code extension works. nvim-metals can utilize some of the same features from metals if you set this in your settings table:
testUserInterface = "Test Explorer",Then instead of using the code lenses it will use the test explorer which you have a couple commands to use to find your tests like :MetalsSelectTestCase. This brings up a picker of your tests in that file. Under the hood in theory this could be used to instead find the lines that the tests are on, and then show icons in the gutter for what tests are there. I want to say that last time I looked into this I wanted to re-use another plugin that offered some of the frameworks for this, and we'd just need to provide the middle layer that makes the requests to metals and then hands the results off to the plugin. But I don't remember what plugin it is.
One other option could be that instead of just the code lens Metals could return an icon to go along with it. For example it's not on by default but you can also set
metals_config.init_options = {
icons = "unicode"
}which will return icons in various places like the super method code lenses. This isn't done for main/test code lenses but I suppose it could.
All that to say, if someone was to work on this I'd explore integrating with the test explorer since Metals can already return all the info you need, you'd just need to capture it, display it, and provide a way for the user to execute it.
drybalka
Describe the feature
I like how in Intellij tests are marked with a small green triangular "run button" icon to the left. In a similar fashion if there is a super method it is marked with a small arrow icon. I personally find it much less distracting a pleasant than a quite large and identical virtual text "test case | debug test case" printed on every test. It would be cool if we could somehow modify the behavior of the virtual text generated by metals, like position (left or right), content (text or icon), or visibility (shown or hidden).
Potential ways to implement
I may be wrong but I think the relevant feature is called "code lens" and is part of metals itself, rather than this plugin in particular. My guess the solution would be to modify the code responsible for parsing this code lens and displaying the virtual text. I could even try a PR if you are interested and/or busy with other stuff.