Should autoquit be enabled by default?

[joelim-work]

Currently the autoquit option (server automatically quits when there are no clients left) is disabled by default.

However it has been suggested to enable it by default, see #912 (comment) and #1761 (comment).

---

Pros:

• New users may be surprised to see a server instance of lf being left behind, and enabling autoquit by default prevents that from happening.
• This is similar to how the tmux server works by default (set using the exit-empty option).

Cons:

• This is a breaking change, and may require users to update their configuration.
• Some users may not want to start the server every time lf is started, especially if it causes delays.

[ilyagr]

Everyone should try inserting set autoquit in their config and see if they notice any problems.

---

I don't have a clear opinion, but it turns out that setting autoquit does affect my config by making a bug I had in it worse. The bug is #1293.

I haven't spent the time to read carefully about the workarounds, but I didn't immediately find one. Does anyone have a suggestion for how to avoid this?

Details

The problematic snippet seems to be:

cmd recol ${{
    w=$(tput cols)
    if [ $w -le 30 ]; then
        set nopreview
        lf -remote "send $id set ratios 1"
    elif [ $w -le 50 ]; then
        lf -remote "send $id set ratios 1:1"
    elif [ $w -le 65 ]; then
        lf -remote "send $id set ratios 3:4"
    elif [ $w -le 95 ]; then  # Was 160
        lf -remote "send $id set ratios 2:3:4"
        set preview
    else
        lf -remote "send $id set ratios 2:2:3:4"
        set preview
    fi
}}

recol

On the first run of lf, the recol command results in this message:

$ lf
listen: send: no such client id is connected

Without autoquit, this only happens once. If I put set autoquit in the config, this happens every time lf is started (if the server isn't running).

[joelim-work]

Well if you take a look at the code, the initial sleep duration is one second when retrying, and then is doubled each time afterwards. But feel free to experiment with the initial duration and the on-init hook, and if it works I might consider submitting it as an actual PR.

But even then I don't know if I will end up changing the default for autoquit at this rate. So far there have only been two votes which is a very small sample size.

[DusanLesan]

@joelim-work I've been using your implementation of on-init for a while now, and I have became dependent on it. Can we have that/something similar included in the lf codebase?
My use case is to source additional config files after launch:

cmd on-init &{{
	[ -n "$TMUX" ] && lf -remote "send $id source $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/lf/tmux_conf"
}}

[joelim-work]

No worries, I have submitted this as a PR: #1838

So I have looked at the poll again, apparently it is now 6-0 in favor of enabling autoquit, I think I will go ahead with the changing the default after all, if there are no further objections.

[joelim-work]

@DusanLesan I have now merged both #1838 and #1839, could you please quickly verify that the new changes work for you?

[DusanLesan]

@joelim-work It looks good to me. Without the autoquit setting, lf quits by default, and the new hook works great. Thank you for making it