Nvim-Tree Keeps Creating "Zombie" Buffers?

[eyalz800]

Description

Recently I found that in my workflow there are many unnamed buffers created, I tried to isolate the issue and I believe I came to the conclusion that this is caused by Nvim-Tree:

Here are the steps to repro:

1. $ nvim
2. :NvimTreeOpen
3. :below copen
4. :wincmd J
6. :NvimTreeClose
7. :ls 
8. :NvimTreeOpen
9. :ls

Step 8 here creates a new unnamed buffer as you can see the difference between steps 7 and 9 output.

Neovim version

NVIM v0.9.1
Build type: Release
LuaJIT 2.1.0-beta3

Operating system and version

macOS 11.5

nvim-tree version

920868d

Clean room replication

Just NvimTree installed

Steps to reproduce

1. $ nvim
2. :NvimTreeOpen
3. :below copen
4. :wincmd J
6. :NvimTreeClose
7. :ls 
8. :NvimTreeOpen
9. :ls

Step 8 here creates a new unnamed buffer as you can see the difference between steps 7 and 9 output.

Expected behavior

No additional buffers are created

Actual behavior

Additional buffers are created every time this is done

[alex-courtis]

:copen
:NvimTreeOpen
:ls!

  1  a   "[No Name]"                    line 1
  2  a-  "[Quickfix List]"              line 0
  3u%a-  "NvimTree_1"                   line 1
  4 #h   "[No Name]"                    line 1

Opening from QF seems to be the issue.

[alex-courtis]

view open_window executes a :vsp which will create a new buffer when in a quickfix buffer window.

[alex-courtis]

We could do something like

vim.api.nvim_buf_get_name(bufnr) == "" and not vim.bo[bufnr].modified

to detect whether the buffer is a no-name-new and delete it.

[alex-courtis]

I've had a go at this and the complexity and risk is too great: detecting the no name new is somewhat reliable, however finding a point at which to perform this delete/wipe is problematic and can result in closed windows e.g. quickfix.

I'm afraid we will just have to live with this one.