Line numbers are now configurable via the gutters setting but apparently can't be changed with the :set command

[groovy9]

I'd like to be able to toggle line numbers on and off while editing. #1967 added a gutters setting that allows disabling line numbers by simply not including "line-numbers" in the gutters array, which is great. But :set throws an error if I try to set gutters to the referenced values:

:set gutters ["diagnostics"]
Bad arguments. Usage: ':set key field'

[CptPotato]

:set gutters ["diagnostics"] doesn't error for me. If it does for you, you might be using the latest release which doesn't include that functionality, yet.

Apart from that, there seem to be two things happening here:

1. :set fails to parse the list, if it contains spaces
   • i.e. ["diagnostics", "line-numbers"] fails, but ["diagnostics","line-numbers"] works
2. the gutter is only updated when the window is created
   • opening a split will update it (closing one sometimes updates it?)

[the-mikedavis]

I can reproduce this. The error comes from this line:

helix/helix-term/src/commands/typed.rs

Lines 1214 to 1216 in 24f5a47

	if args.len() != 2 {
	anyhow::bail!("Bad arguments. Usage: `:set key field`");
	}

It looks like we're parsing the arguments :set gutters ["diagnostics"] as ["gutters", "[", "diagnostics", "]"].

:set gutters "[\"diagnostics\"]" is parsed correctly as a workaround but ideally we should be fixing the argument parser

[the-mikedavis]

Hmm actually on further investigation this looks like the intended behavior of helix_core::shellwords based on the tests. You should escape quotes with \". Tuning that behavior could be discussed though.

:set gutters on its own doesn't refresh the gutters as CptPotato says. The helix_view::editor::Editor::refresh_config function (or maybe something in Application) will need some extra handling for gutters

[jcalabro]

Hi there! Sorry to dig up an old issue, but I believe this is the way to do it in 23.10 at least? This is working for me

:set gutters.layout ["line-numbers"]

[phlippieb]

Hi there! Sorry to dig up an old issue, but I believe this is the way to do it in 23.10 at least? This is working for me

:set gutters.layout ["line-numbers"]

This seems to work, but only if the list contains exactly zero or one elements. Not sure how to set multiple elements. `:set gutters.layout ["line-numbers", "spacer"] still errors with the "Bad arguments" message.

[pascalkuthe]

This doesn't work because we parse the command input as json but have our own parsing/word splitting. You can use set like this you just need to comeup with the right way to escape it as Mike showed above.
This will be covered by the config factor refsctor and moving away from implementing :set using serde_json.

Closing in favor of #8853