Create a multibuffer from multiple files?

[xpe]

I'd like to choose some files, smoosh them together in a multi-buffer, looking something like this:

===== file_1.md =====
# File 1
This is file 1

===== file_2.md =====
# File 2
This is file 2

===== file_3.md =====
# File 3
This is file 3

Of course, having a nice visual horizontal separator would be nice.

Design Questions

• how to specify the files to include?
  • perhaps files inside a directory
  • perhaps a multi-selection
  • perhaps a newline-separated list of files
• how to specify the order of files?
  • initially
  • later
• adding/removing files to/from the multibuffer
• convenient UX for renaming files in the multi-buffer

[JosephTLyons]

I'd also like a command to open selections in multi-buffer. This would be useful for a variety of things, but one would be:

Running Select All Matches and then running the open selections in multi-buffer command to pull everything into one tight view, where you can easily double check that all of your selections are selecting the things you want

[xpe]

Hi, is your "friendly amendment" / suggestion about multiple selections in a single file? Would it work for multiple files?

[mikayla-maki]

These features sound awesome!

[JosephTLyons]

I've had a branch open for probably 6 months with a bit of work for Open Selections in Multi-buffer, but I ran into some issues and abandoned it. I've been wanting that for a long time now 😂

[alejandrovrojas]

@JosephTLyons I've also been hoping https://github.com/zed-industries/community/issues/698 would get some attention at some point!

@xpe I think a file based selection would quickly lead to a very cluttered multi-buffer. I'd like to use a command like append selection to multi-buffer which would solve the issue of what to include and in which order, and most importantly only show the most relevant lines of each file.

On that note, Emacs has a feature called narrowing which allows to isolate a buffer to a specific number of lines and thereby limiting all editing operations to those lines only. This feature by itself would be a great addition to Zed but it could lead to an even more interesting usage of a multi-buffer view consisting of narrowed parts of different buffers.

[imthatgin]

This is something I've wanted from vscode for a long time, which has been more or less impossible to implement with just the extension API. Has anyone made progress on this type of feature?

[SomeoneToIgnore]

I do no think the plugins should do that, it seems quite fundamental to be included into the core.

The main question here is the UI: how that should be displayed to the user, in particular, how "this buffer and this particular range of it to add" is selected in the interface.

After that is solved, all that's left to do is call

zed/crates/multi_buffer/src/multi_buffer.rs

Lines 1224 to 1243 in 385e05e

	pub fn push_excerpts<O>(
	&mut self,
	buffer: Model<Buffer>,
	ranges: impl IntoIterator<Item = ExcerptRange<O>>,
	cx: &mut ModelContext<Self>,
	) -> Vec<ExcerptId>
	where
	O: text::ToOffset,
	{
	self.insert_excerpts_after(ExcerptId::max(), buffer, ranges, cx)
	}
	pub fn push_excerpts_with_context_lines<O>(
	&mut self,
	buffer: Model<Buffer>,
	ranges: Vec<Range<O>>,
	context_line_count: u32,
	cx: &mut ModelContext<Self>,
	) -> Vec<Range<Anchor>>
	where

and, optionally, create a new multi buffer before doing that.