Tying mark persistence to :mksession foo.vim and vim -S foo.vim?

[barries]

I've silently, and gladly, used your plugin for well over a decade now, and it's been absolutely magical--especially when viewing telemetry / log files that log tracing info (i.e. function calls/returns and variables) with the same names as in code. Highlight them in the log, see them light up in code, and vice versa. And being able to use vim-native patterns (:Mark /foo\|bar/) and adding/removing cword / current selection to specific palette entries are highlighting superpowers.

Q: Is there a convenient way to save marks as part of the :mksession path/to/file and nvim -S path/to/file magic?

I use vim sessions when, eg, treesitter causes nvim to hang forever (lua-ls may be the culprit), or when fooling with my config scripts. Either way, so many thanks for a thorough, well-integrated-with-nvim, amazingly featureful module.

P.S. Here's a new contender for your Related Works section: high-str

[inkarkat]

I so far thought that having global mark persistence in the viminfo file should be enough, especially because :MarkSave supports an arbitrary number of named slots for the marks. But it might be useful to instead store the marks in the session file itself.

Fortunately, the mechanism used for mark persistence in viminfo via variable names can be made to work with :mksession as well, as long as you

:set sessionoptions+=globals

I've implemented that in mark.vim version 3.4.0; you also need to update the ingo-library dependency (to 1.047, as neither Vim nor Neovim support List variables in session files yet; I've opened an issue for that).

[barries]

Many thanks!

I (via lazy.nvim) upgraded to latest, added globals to sessionoptions, highlighted something, and did the mksession ... nvim -S dance and, sadly... no highlight and :Marks a palette with no patterns.

Is there some other tidbit I need, or can I provide some logs or other info to help?

        url    https://github.com/inkarkat/vim-ingo-library
        branch master
        commit f14a585

        url    https://github.com/inkarkat/vim-mark
        branch master
        commit 6b81077

sessionoptions=blank,buffers,curdir,folds,help,tabpages,winsize,terminal,globals
      Last set from ~/.config/nvim/init.lua (run Nvim with -V1 for more details)

:mksession! ~/tmp/nvim_init.vim | wq | qa

nvim  -S ~/tmp/nvim_init.vim

[inkarkat]

You do have the right plugin versions, but with the default plugin configuration, marks need to be explicitly loaded (via :MarkLoad) after restoring the session. (Or enable auto-loading via let g:mwAutoLoadMarks = 1.)

The saved session should contain a definition for a MARK_marks variable. If instead an (all uppercase) g:MARK_MARKS exists (in the running Vim, or the viminfo file after exiting Vim), you still have mark persistence targeting the viminfo file enabled. You either need to disable that (:set viminfo-=!), or explicitly :MarkSave marks before writing the session and :MarkLoad marks after loading it, as the viminfo takes precedence.

[barries]

[marking this as the answer because it has both of your answers collected in one config]

Thanks, that did the trick. For future searchers, my config is now:

-- The options globals must be done before vim-mark is loaded
-- (this is an old-skool vimscript plugin).
--
-- vim-mark maps a fair number of sequences, including \r, which
-- I map for replace, and # and *, which make search on mark
-- not work intuitively for me, so I disable the default keymaps.
-- and map only the few functions I need.

vim.g.mw_no_mappings               = 1;   -- 1: Tell mark.vim not to install global mapping
vim.g.mwHistAdd                    = "";  -- "": Don"t auto add to search or input history
vim.g.mwDefaultHighlightingPalette = "maximum";
vim.g.mwAutoLoadMarks              = 1;   -- Enable mksession auto reloading
vim.opt.sessionoptions:append{ "globals" }; -- Allow mksession to save current vim-mark highlights; worried that this may confuse other plugins, but it's a very limited set of globals: /<UpperAlpha>\w+<LowerAlpha>/

vim.keymap.set({"n", "x"}, "<Leader>hc", "<Plug>MarkConfirmAllClear",   { desc = "[C]lear all highlights (with confirmation"           });
vim.keymap.set({"n", "x"}, "<Leader>hh", "<Plug>MarkSet",               { desc = "Toggle [H]ighlight/unhighlight on cword / selection" });
vim.keymap.set({"n", "x"}, "<Leader>hl", ":<C-u>call mark#List()<cr>",  { desc = "[l]list highlights (show palette)"                   });
vim.keymap.set({"n", "x"}, "<Leader>ht", "<Plug>MarkToggle",            { desc = "[t]toggle highlights enable/disable"                 });

vim.keymap.set({"n", "x"}, "<Leader>hN", "<Plug>MarkSearchCurrentPrev", { desc = "[p]rev occurrence of current highlight"              });
vim.keymap.set({"n", "x"}, "<Leader>hn", "<Plug>MarkSearchCurrentNext", { desc = "[n]ext occurrence of current highlight"              });