When does compilation take place? And where do the compiled files appear?

[whatlaa]

All my .nfnl.fnl files only contain {}

I have a .nfnl.fnl in nvim/lua folder. When I save a .fnl file there, it gets compiled to .lua.

I also have another folder nvim/lua/tester with a .nfnl.fnl file. When I save a .fnl file there, nothing happens.

What am I missing?

[anntnzrb]

Place a single .nfnl.fnl at your project root (e.g., nvim/.nfnl.fnl), not in nvim/lua/ or subdirectories. nfnl searches upward from the edited file location to find .nfnl.fnl, and the config file defines the root directory for compilation. The default source-file-patterns includes **/*.fnl which recursively finds all .fnl files under the root, so both nvim/lua/foo.fnl and nvim/lua/tester/bar.fnl will compile correctly when the config is at the project root.

[Olical]

Compilation occurs on BufWritePost which is set up here

nfnl/fnl/nfnl/callback.fnl

Lines 60 to 65 in fecf731

	(when (not= false vim.g.nfnl#compile_on_write)
	(vim.api.nvim_create_autocmd
	["BufWritePost"]
	{:group (vim.api.nvim_create_augroup (str.join ["nfnl-on-write" root-dir ev.buf]) {})
	:buffer ev.buf
	:callback (fennel-buf-write-post-callback-fn root-dir cfg)}))

So as soon as your :w completes nfnl kicks in to compile and write the .lua counterpart meaning that at runtime everything is pure Lua, the compiler is never used unless you're writing .fnl files.

As for the directory filtering that's controlled by :source-file-patterns (there's more on that in the readme), but that should be defaulted to all files under your current directory, it's very permissive by default. Normally what I'd recommend is that you have a single .nfnl.fnl file at the root of your project, but I suppose that might not work for your specific use case.

Let me try to reproduce your issue.

Edit: So your directory setup did actually work fine for me, both files compiled just fine and nfnl prompted me to allow both levels of .nfnl.fnl to run - so it used the upper one for the upper dir and when I edited a file in the lower dir it prompted me to allow the lower config file.

nfnl will walk upwards from the file to find the appropriate config. I personally only have one .nfnl.fnl file per project in the root. The idea being that you can configure the compiler for your project and any contributors get the exact same config per project.

[whatlaa]

I don't know what I did, but things seem to work now. I guess it was something temporary I cannot reproduce with other folders. Things seem to be working as expected now, so, thanks.

[whatlaa]

And now it's back. This is happening on my nvim/lua folder which previously used to work. When I save the file, no compilation takes place.
What does path-is-not-in-source-file-patterns mean? This happens when I try do :NfnlCompileFile
:NfnlCompileAllFiles seem to be the only thing that compiles consistently.

[whatlaa]

Alright. I found the issue. I'm on Windows, if that makes any difference.
When I start nvim inside the folder that contains .nfnl.fnl (nvim/lua), it won't compile on save, but will compile when CompileAllFile is used.
When I start nvim in nvim, and traverse into nvim/lua, and then make changes and :w, it compiles.

Also, I seem to have pressed some button that blocks .nfnl.fnl from working inside the nvim/lua/tester folder. When I remove the file, compilation works. How do I undo this?

Found the answer. I'll leave the question here in case someone else stumbles upon this.

There's a 'trust' file inside nvim-data that contains the persistent data regarding trust. I removed the one with the exclamation mark on it.

[whatlaa]

I'm using LazyVim on Windows. Here's what I've observed so far. I'm leaving this here, in case someone else have this issue and is scratching their head wondering what's going on.

• When I open vim using just 'nvim', and load a fnl file starting from the LazyVim welcome screen, compilation doesn't work.
• When I open vim using "nvim . " in a the folder that nfnl reads the .nfnl.fnl file from, compilation won't work.

This is my setup:

in nvim/fnl:
;nvim/fnl/.nfnl.fnl
(print "nvim/fnl")
{}

in nvim/fnl/config:
;nvim/fnl/config/.nfnl.fnl
(print "nvim/fnl/config")
{}

• If I start "nvim . " in nvim/fnl, and traverse to nvim/fnl/config, and make a change to a .fnl file, it compiles.
• If I start "nvim . " in nvim/fnl/config, and make a change to a .fnl file, it fails to compile.
• in both cases, a notification showing "nvim/fnl/config" tell me which file it's accessing.
• I rename nvim/fnl/config/.nfnl.fnl to something else.
• If I start "nvim . " in nvim/fnl, and traverse to nvim/fnl/config, and make a change to a .fnl file, it fails to compile.
• If I start "nvim . " in nvim/fnl/config, and make a change to a .fnl file, it compiles!
• a notification showing "nvim/fnl" tells me which file it's accessing.
• so, if I start "nvim ." in the folder from which nfnl accesses the .nfnl.fnl file from, automatic compilation will not happen.

So, at least I have a workaround and know how to get nfnl to work for me. Just don't start in the folder from which nfnl accesses the .nfnl.fnl file.

[Olical]

Thank you for documenting all of this. I think there's a subtle issue around the way nfnl hunts around your tree for it's config, mostly on Windows. This should help find and fix it for good.