Wanted - ability to change default directory handler away from dired.

[synic]

There are lots of cool filemanagers for emacs, and a few of them are available in layers for spacemacs, including ranger, and neotree.

Learning one of these, however, is not sufficient for using emacs, because the default directory handler is dired, and spacemacs doesn't change it. So even if you learn everything about ranger, you're still going to need to learn dired and switch back and forth between them.

Links on the spacemacs homepage provided by projectile open in dired. Typing :e ~/ sometimes loads it in dired, sometimes in ranger. Sometimes it's a minimal version of dired, sometimes it's a full buffer version of dired. I have not figured out what changes this.

IMHO, people should only have to learn to use one file manager. It should be easy to change what file manager that is.

[synic]

Related ranger ticket: punassuming/ranger.el#49

[punassuming]

I am baking something into ranger to optionally default to opening in deer, but do we want to develop a handler in spacemacs to cover all managers?

[synic]

@Ralesi has put this into ranger. I'm going to leave this ticket open as I still think it's probably something people will be looking for in spacemacs. If someone wants to use neotree, they are going to want to use neotree for all file operations. It seems strange to install a file manager that you can't use everywhere a file manager is required.

[robbyoconnor]

@Ralesi -- yes :D

I am baking something into ranger to optionally default to opening in deer, but do we want to develop a handler in spacemacs to cover all managers?

[punassuming]

@synic, @robbyoconnor, I have something working as a macro, what directory handlers would we like outside of dired, ranger / deer, and neotree? I need to test the possible options to make sure it works.

[synic]

@Ralesi Looked around in the layers. The only other one I know is a file manager is vinegar: https://github.com/syl20bnr/spacemacs/tree/develop/layers/%2Bvim/vinegar

[punassuming]

Right now, with neotree, it forces as a sidebar , so adding it as a handler disrupts the flow. Vinegar is hooked into dired much the same way as ranger, so if you open a directory in dired, it will automatically show. We can disable that, and make it a separate minor mode in the layer though.

[syl20bnr]

I put this one on the side for now as I see it as an advanced feature, let's keep it open for a future version.

[github-actions]

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