Allow ya sub to wait for a yazi to start

[mikavilpas]

Please describe the problem you're trying to solve

As you know, yazi.nvim uses ya sub to listen for hover events from the yazi instance that is started inside of neovim. I just found out that all this time I have been testing that feature, I have had some extra yazi instances running in the background. I killed them and learned the first hover event from the yazi that starts up is very difficult to read.

I think the reason for this is that ya sub requires the yazi instance to have started (the DDS has to be active before starting). Yazi.nvim has to start yazi first because of this, but a side effect is that the hover event has already been sent and is lost because of this timing related issue.

I can get the first hover event to work when a yazi is already running outside of neovim when yazi.nvim creates a second one, for example.

Would you be willing to contribute this feature?

• Yes, I'll give it a shot

Describe the solution you'd like

How about adding a new flag such as ya sub --wait-for-yazi ... that could be given to block and wait?

I could then reverse the order and start ya first, and yazi immediately after.

Additional context

It might be a good idea to keep the current behaviour of failing if a yazi is not active to avoid breaking compatibility with any integration that might depend on this.

[sxyazi]

I've been thinking about this issue, and I kind of feel like something like ya sub --wait won't really solve your problem.

If I understand correctly, you expect the --wait behavior to create a loop that checks every few hundred milliseconds to see if the Yazi server has started, and if it has, it connects to it.

But the problem is that during those few hundred milliseconds while waiting and retrying, messages can still be lost. So this method doesn't seem reliable, and we can't set the delay too low because that would consume a lot of CPU without addressing the problem fundamentally.

Can you describe the functionality you're aiming for in more detail? For example, where do you expect the hover state to come from — inside Neovim or outside? And if an external Yazi instance sends a new hover message, what's your expected behavior?

[mikavilpas]

If I understand correctly, you expect the --wait behavior to create a loop that checks every few hundred milliseconds to see if the Yazi server has started, and if it has, it connects to it.

Actually, what I think I am looking for is a way to receive the file that yazi is hovering. Maybe I thought it might be possible to receive messages with ya even before any yazi has started broadcasting them.

Here is what I see when yazi is opened. The initial hover event is lost when the embedded yazi is started (the background color of the file changes when this happens). Only after another file is hovered, the color changes.

hover.mov