cider-popup-buffer-display: honor special-display-buffer-names if customized for a given CIDER buffer name

[vemv]

Before this PR, if I (add-to-list 'special-display-buffer-names '("*cider-inspect*" my/display-fn)), the buffer would be rendered twice - once through one's custom function, and once again through CIDER.

I verified it works as intended.

Cheers - V

[bbatsov]

I've never heard of this Emacs functionality, but now that we support it we should probably mention it somewhere in the docs. Even I'm not sure why would the end users want to play with this right now, so some examples would be welcome.

[vemv]

I considered it, but most of all I didn't find an adequate page in the manual.

How about: for each possible target (Inspector, etc), mention in their specific page:

You can control how the popup is rendered using the special-display-buffer-names variable blah blah....

[vemv]

I'll merge this so as not to pile up PRs (few incoming), but LMK about the best page(s) to doc this

[bbatsov]

How about: for each possible target (Inspector, etc), mention in their specific page:

That sounds reasonable. It can also mentioned only once around the popup-related settings.

[rrudakov]

This update introduced a bug: when I evaluate code using C-c C-p the result should be rendered in the *cider-result* buffer, now this buffer is empty.

Before:

After:

[rrudakov]

Also according to the docs, variable special-display-buffer-names is obsolete since emacs version 24.3:

special-display-buffer-names is a variable defined in ‘window.el’.

Its value is nil

This variable is obsolete since 24.3; use ‘display-buffer-alist’
instead.

[vemv]

Thanks!

I think I know the cause - there were two kinds of code paths for raising popups.

Checking

[vemv]

Anyway, what I find odd is that you perceive any difference given that your special-display-buffer-names value is nil.

The code branch that does not handle special-display-buffer-names is essentially untouched - can you spot a bug in the diff?

[rrudakov]

The only difference I can see is that function cider-popup-buffer-display returns string now (buffer-name) and before it was returning a buffer. I guess this returned value was used to insert the result to the new buffer.

[vemv]

Good catch - that was it!

Pushing to master now

[vemv]

I'll also see about the deprecated var. The old one has worked for me for some 5 years but yeah, we should primarily support the modern alternative

That can wait though

[rrudakov]

I've been using display-buffer-alist for a while to control windows behavior, wasn't even aware of special-display-buffer-names until this moment :)

[vemv]

I'll have to check it out. Had you successfully used it with cider buffers?

[rrudakov]

Yes, sure.

Here's the relevant part of my config if you're curious (pretty big, but it's easy to spot CIDER-related buffers): https://git.sr.ht/~rrudakov/dotfiles/tree/feature/dotfiles-ng/item/templates/emacs.d/emacs.org#L630-859

Also:

• https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/manual/html_node/elisp/Displaying-Buffers.html - official documentation
• https://www.masteringemacs.org/article/demystifying-emacs-window-manager - good article on the topic

[bbatsov]

This variable is obsolete since 24.3; use ‘display-buffer-alist’

CIDER only supports Emacs 26+, so it's pointless to support the legacy variable IMO (so we can completely revert those changes). I didn't know about it, but I certainly know about display-buffer-alist. :-)

[vemv]

I'll revert it today after migrating my personal stuff special-display-buffer-names -> display-buffer-alist and verifying it keeps working as usual w/ cider buffers.