Target window/buffer in client

Help
1

I’m integrating some long running asynchronous processes (think ci, linters, style checkers, etc…) and I’ve set them up to send eval -client commands to create highlighters as issues are found. It works as long as I don’t switch buffers between the start and result of the external process, otherwise the highlighter gets applied to the wrong window/buffer. As a minimal example based on Kakoune’s interfacing document, run this in one buffer then switch to another buffer before the sleep expires.

:nop %sh{ {
    sleep 10
    echo "eval -client '$kak_client' 'execute-keys %{ohello wrong buffer<esc>}'" |
        kak -p ${kak_session}
} > /dev/null 2>&1 < /dev/null & }

Is there a way to target the window scope for a specific buffer for a specific client?

2

As always seems to be the case, I stumbled on to a solution after finally pulling the trigger on a post. Using execute-keys -draft with a :buffer seems to do the trick.

:nop %sh{ {
    sleep 10
    echo "eval -client '$kak_client' 'execute-keys -draft %{:buffer $kak_bufname<ret>ohello right buffer<esc>}'" |
        kak -p ${kak_session}
} > /dev/null 2>&1 < /dev/null & }
3

There’s also eval -buffer $kak_bufname which lets you execute KakScript in the context of an open buffer, whether or not it’s visible in any particular client.

4

The problem I’ve had with eval is that it can’t target the window scope.

eval -client client0 %[ eval -buffer test.c %[ set-option window custom_hl_range various_matching_ranges ] ]

fails with

Error: 1:1: 'eval': 1:2: 'eval': 1:2: 'set-option': no window in context

EDIT: And again I stumble on the solution after posting. If you reverse the nested evals it works.

eval -buffer test.c %[ eval -client client0 %[ set-option window custom_hl_range various_matching_ranges ] ]