Notable changes since Nvim 0.8 news-0.9

Cscope support is now removed (see cscope and nvim-removed):

Commands removed:

:cscope

:lcscope

:scscope

:cstag

Options removed:

cscopepathcomp

cscopeprg

cscopequickfix

cscoperelative

cscopetag

cscopetagorder

cscopeverbose

Eval functions removed:

cscope_connection()

:hardcopy is now removed (see hardcopy and nvim-removed):

Commands removed:

:hardcopy

Options removed:

printdevice

printencoding

printexpr

printfont

printheader

printmbcharset

'paste' option is now deprecated and 'pastetoggle' is removed. paste works automatically in GUI and terminal (TUI) Nvim. Just Paste It.™

Changes to vim.treesitter.get_node_text():

It now returns string, as opposed to string|string[]|nil.

The concat option has been removed as it was not consistently applied.

Invalid ranges now cause an error instead of returning nil.

help treesitter parser was renamed to vimdoc. The only user-visible change is that language-specific highlight groups need to be renamed from @foo.help to @foo.vimdoc.

The default value of 'commentstring' is now empty instead of "/*%s*/".

libiconv and intl are now required build dependencies.

Treesitter syntax highlighting for help files now supports highlighted code examples. To enable, create a .config/nvim/ftplugin/help.lua with the contents

vim.treesitter.start()

Note: Highlighted code examples are only available in the Nvim manual, not in help files taken from Vim. The treesitter vimdoc parser is also work in progress and not guaranteed to correctly highlight every help file in the wild.

Added support for semantic token highlighting to the LSP client. This functionality is enabled by default when a client that supports this feature is attached to a buffer. Opt-out can be performed by deleting the semanticTokensProvider from the LSP client's {server_capabilities} in the LspAttach callback. See lsp-semantic-highlight for more information.

vim.inspect_pos(), vim.show_pos() and :Inspect allow a user to get or show items at a given buffer position. Currently this includes treesitter captures, LSP semantic tokens, syntax groups and extmarks.

vim.treesitter.inspect_tree() and :InspectTree opens a split window showing a text representation of the nodes in a language tree for the current buffer.

'statuscolumn' option to customize the area to the side of a window, normally containing the fold, sign and number columns. This new option follows the 'statusline' syntax and can be used to transform the line numbers, create mouse click callbacks for signs, introduce a custom margin or separator etc.

vim.secure.trust(), :trust allows the user to manage files in trust database. vim.secure.read() reads a file and prompts the user if it should be trusted and, if so, returns the file's contents. Used by 'exrc'

EditorConfig support is now builtin. This is enabled by default and happens automatically. To disable it, add the following to your config:

vim.g.editorconfig = false

A new environment variable named NVIM_APPNAME enables configuring the directories where Nvim should find its configuration and state files. See :help $NVIM_APPNAME .

Added support for running Lua scripts from shell using -l.

nvim -l foo.lua --arg1 --arg2

Also works with stdin:

echo "print(42)" | nvim -l -

Added an omnifunc implementation for Lua, vim.lua_omnifunc()

Added a new experimental vim.loader that byte-compiles and caches Lua files. To enable the new loader, add the following at the top of your init.lua:

vim.loader.enable()

Added vim.version for parsing and comparing version strings conforming to the semver specification.

When using Nvim inside tmux 3.2 or later, the default clipboard provider will now copy to the system clipboard. provider-clipboard

'showcmdloc' option to display the 'showcmd' information in the status line or tab line. A new %S statusline item is available to place the 'showcmd' text in a custom 'statusline'. Useful for when 'cmdheight' is set to 0.

'splitkeep' option to control the scroll behavior of horizontal splits.

'wildoptions' flag "fuzzy" enables fuzzy-matching during cmdline-completion.

'diffopt' now includes a linematch option to enable a second-stage diff on individual hunks to provide much more accurate diffs. This option is also available to vim.text.diff()

--remote-ui option was added to connect to a remote instance and display in it in a TUI in the local terminal. This can be used run a headless nvim instance in the background and display its UI on demand, which previously only was possible using an external UI implementation.

Added a vim.lsp.codelens.clear() function to clear codelenses.

Added support for the willSave and willSaveWaitUntil capabilities to the LSP client. willSaveWaitUntil allows a server to modify a document before it gets saved. Example use-cases by language servers include removing unused imports, or formatting the file.

Added preliminary support for the workspace/didChangeWatchedFiles capability to the LSP client to notify servers of file changes on disk. The feature is disabled by default and can be enabled by setting the workspace.didChangeWatchedFiles.dynamicRegistration=true capability.

vim.diagnostic now supports LSP DiagnosticsTag. See: https://microsoft.github.io/language-server-protocol/specification/#diagnosticTag

vim.diagnostic.is_disabled() checks if diagnostics are disabled in a given buffer or namespace.

Treesitter captures can now be transformed by directives. This will allow more complicated dynamic language injections.

vim.treesitter.get_node_text() now accepts a metadata option for writing custom directives using vim.treesitter.query.add_directive().

vim.treesitter.language.add() replaces vim.treesitter.language.require_language.

vim.treesitter.foldexpr() can be used for 'foldexpr' to use treesitter for folding.

Expanded the TSNode API with:

TSNode:tree()

TSNode:has_changes()

TSNode:extra()

TSNode:equal()

Treesitter injection queries now use the format described at https://tree-sitter.github.io/tree-sitter/3-syntax-highlighting.html#language-injection . Support for the previous format will be removed in a future release.

Added nvim_get_hl() for getting highlight group definitions in a format compatible with nvim_set_hl().

vim.filetype.get_option() to get the default option value for a specific filetype. This is a wrapper around nvim_get_option_value() with caching.

require'bit' is now always available lua-bit

'exrc' now supports .nvim.lua file.

'exrc' is no longer marked deprecated.

The TUI is changed to run in a separate process (previously, a separate thread was used). This is not supposed to be a visible change to the user, but might be the cause of subtle changes of behavior and bugs.

Vim's has('gui_running') is now supported as a way for plugins to check if a GUI (not the TUI) is attached to Nvim. has()

msgsep is now always enabled even if 'display' doesn't contain the "msgsep" flag. It is no longer possible to scroll the whole screen when showing messages longer than 'cmdheight'.

API calls now show more information about where an exception happened.

The win_viewport UI event now contains information about virtual lines, meaning that smooth scrolling can now be implemented more consistently.

The := {expr} syntax can be used to evaluate a Lua expression, as a shorter form of :lua ={expr}. := and :[range]= without argument are unchanged. However :=# and similar variants using ex-flags are no longer supported.

Unsaved changes are now preserved rather than discarded when channel-stdio is closed.

nvim_open_win() now accepts a relative mouse option to open a floating win relative to the mouse. Note that the mouse doesn't update frequently without setting vim.o.mousemoveevent = true

nvim_eval_statusline() supports evaluating the 'statuscolumn' through a new opts field: use_statuscol_lnum.

nvim_buf_get_extmarks() now accepts a -1 ns_id to request extmarks from all namespaces and adds the namespace id to the details array. Other missing properties have been added to the details array and marks can be filtered by type.

vim.diagnostic.open_float() (and therefore vim.diagnostic.config()) now accepts a suffix option which, by default, renders LSP error codes. Similarly, the virtual_text configuration in vim.diagnostic.config() now has a suffix option which does nothing by default.

vim.fs.dir() now has a opts argument with a depth field to allow recursively searching a directory tree.

vim.gsplit() supports all features of vim.split().

:highlight now supports an additional attribute "altfont".

:Man manpage viewer supports manpage names containing spaces.

nvim_select_popupmenu_item() now supports cmdline-completion popup menu.

nvim_list_uis() reports all ui-option fields.

nvim_get_option_value() now has a filetype option so it can return the default option for a specific filetype.

build: Several improvements were made to make the code generation scripts more deterministic, and a LUA_GEN_PRG build parameter has been introduced to allow for a workaround for some remaining reproducibility problems.

filetype.vim is removed in favor of vim.filetype (Note that filetype logic and tests still align with Vim, so additions or changes need to be contributed there first.) See https://github.com/neovim/neovim/pull/20674.

'hkmap', 'hkmapp' and 'aleph' options were removed. Use 'keymap' option instead.

LanguageTree:parse() no longer returns changed regions. Please use the on_changedtree callbacks instead.

vim.highlight.create(), vim.highlight.link() were removed, use nvim_set_hl() instead.

require'health' was removed. Use vim.health instead.