Vim Local Git History

neovim

There is a lua-version of this plugin, too. It is here: https://github.com/m42e/lgh.nvim

What this plugin does

This plugin saves the file worked on in a git repository every time you save. Since 2021-03-18 it is done using the jobstart api, so it won't be compatible with older version of (neo)vim.

Why? Don't you know undo?

Yes, I do know undo, and yes I know persistent undo, too. But there are times, when you replace a file on disk, either by yourself or a git checkout (--force) or you evil twin deletes a file. And here undo does not help.

How to use it?

Install it, feel saver. If you want to see the history of a file type

:LGHistory

And then you get an fzf window with all the dates when the file has been stored.

Todos

• Search for files where you don't have the exact filename
• Allowing diff mode
• Handling of more edge use cases.
• Handling :q in diffmode like fugitive does

Installation

fzf-vim is required. Use vim-plug or any other Vim plugin manager.

With vim-plug:

Plug 'm42e/vim-lgh'

Options

You can set the backup directory:

let g:lgh_basedir = '~/.vim/githistory'

You can also set a basedir for a file indivually, either manually or by autocmds:

autocmd BufEnter *.py let b:lgh_dir = '~/my_python_githistory'

You can specify not to use diff as default:

let g:lgh_diff = 0

See the history by:

:LGHistory

Inspirations

• vim-historic Which also handles a local history in git. But uses some shell script and I try to avoid that. To at least have a possibility that it may work on windows
• vim-localhistory I saw he is using fzf for handling the history files. I really liked the idea, because I thought about how to make vim-historic better but thinking of that I was afraid. vim-localhistory gave me the hint into the right direction.