Auto expand to current file

[BhasherBEL]

Is your feature request related to a problem? Please describe.
When opening a file, i.e. with nvim a/b/c.sh, nvim tree shows the current folder, which is really nice, but don't expand to the opened file.

Describe the solution you'd like
It would be nice to be able to automatically expend the tree up to the current file, at least at startup, but probably also when using commands such as :split, :edit, ...

Describe alternatives you've considered
For now, I manually expand the tree, but it's not really a long-term solution.

[alex-courtis]

You can automatically expand the tree to focus on the current file, with several options to customise this: :help nvim-tree-opts-update-focused-file

It's turned off by default.

There are also several recipes here to define startup behaviour: wiki: Open At Startup

I reckon "Open For Files And [No Name] Buffers" might suit you.

[CoinCheung]

@alex-courtis Would you please show me how to use that function, and how to write it to my init.lua?

[alex-courtis]

Before anything disable netrw Hijacking

-- start of your init.lua
vim.g.loaded_netrw       = 1
vim.g.loaded_netrwPlugin = 1

Create an open function to match your tastes. This might suit you:

local function open_nvim_tree(data)

  -- buffer is a real file on the disk
  local real_file = vim.fn.filereadable(data.file) == 1

  if not real_file then
    return
  end

  -- open the tree, find the file but don't focus it
  require("nvim-tree.api").tree.toggle({ focus = false, find_file = true, })
end

Create a hook to call that function on vim enter. After everything else:

local function open_nvim_tree()

  -- open the tree
  require("nvim-tree.api").tree.open()
end