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]

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

[ilyagr]

Sorry I lost track of this conversation. on-init sounds like a good solution, I will try it out soon, thank you for figuring it out!

[ilyagr]

#1916 might end up having some related discussion.