Feature: find .env files in parent directories

[teleivo]

Issues

• I have checked existing issues and there are no existing ones with the same request.

Feature description

Hi 😄 and thank you for your work on this amazing plugin 🥳

I discovered that :Rest env select searches downward from the current buffer's directory. That is surprising to me as most tools search upward stopping at the project root like when finding a .git directory. find_env_files searches downward due to

rest.nvim/lua/rest-nvim/dotenv.lua

Line 65 in 62606c3

end, { limit = math.huge, type = "file", path = "./" })

(https://neovim.io/doc/user/lua.html#vim.fs.find() upward=false by default)

This prevents me from reusing .env files at the root of a project with .http files in nested dirs. I can only make it work if I keep the :cd at the project's root. However, that adds .env files in nested dirs that are irrelevant IMHO.

Imagine a project with

• .env

• ./a

• ./a/.env

• ./a/a.http

• ./b/b.http

• When opening b.http from directory ./b (or doing :cd ./b) the root .env is not shown in the select UI.

• When opening b.http from the root dir ./a/.env is shown in the select UI while from my point of view, its meant to be scoped to ./a

I assume you are open to changes here due to your comment

https://github.com/rest-nvim/rest.nvim/blob/62606c3599bd304227457d6e20580965939b191e/lua/rest-nvim/dotenv.lua#L61C1-L62C63

😋

Changing the search direction is a breaking change so I wonder if we could make this

https://github.com/rest-nvim/rest.nvim/blob/62606c3599bd304227457d6e20580965939b191e/lua/rest-nvim/dotenv.lua#L58C1-L58C28

a configurable function with this one staying the default? Maybe you also have different suggestion 👌🏻

Please let me know what you think! I could give it a try at implementing it if you would want. Thank you again!!

[teleivo]

This is a sketch of the find_env_files I would want to be able to configure

---Find a list of environment files starting from the current directory
---@return string[] files Environment variable files path
function M.find_env_files()
    -- We are currently looking for any ".*env*" file, e.g. ".env", ".env.json"

    local start = vim.api.nvim_buf_get_name(0)
    local git_dir = vim.fs.root(0, ".git")
    -- vim.fs.find stop is exclusive meaning the stop dir will not be searched so I'll get its parent
    local stop = vim.fs.dirname(git_dir)
    local files = vim.fs.find(function(name)
        return name:match(config.env.pattern)
    end, { limit = math.huge, type = "file", path = start, stop = stop, upward = true })
    return files
end

The stop might need a safe default but in my case .http files are always in a .git repo. That's obviously the users choice/responsibility if that function lives in the users config.

[boltlessengineer]

Uh oh... Yeah I agree that it is wrong design.
I think we can just make a breaking change to fix this. Although it is a breaking change on behavior, it will be fine to have just minor version upgrade as it is not working as intended.

[teleivo]

Uh oh... Yeah I agree that it is wrong design. I think we can just make a breaking change to fix this. Although it is a breaking change on behavior, it will be fine to have just minor version upgrade as it is not working as intended.

Thank you @boltlessengineer for making it configurable 😄! Will you make the change in behavior later? AFAIK it behaves the same way as before 🤔

[boltlessengineer]

Oh I forgot to take a note about it here sorry about that.
I changed my mind and decided to keep current semantic versioning rules.

The current behavior will be change to search upward until cwd in upcoming v4 release.