Developing a Neovim Docker Plugin from Scratch

Time for a bit of Lua hacking. Ever since I fell down the Neovim rabbit hole I've been having a tonne of fun building little extensions and plugins. And I found that by using Telescope as a framework, it's fairly easy to take any command-line tool that emits JSON and get a nice little browser/manager going. So let me walk you through it.

We'll start from an empty directory and end with a plugin that lets you browse through all the docker images you have available, and start a VM directly from inside the editor. (VM in ViM!)

Links:

0:00 Intro
1:15 Setting up for development
2:55 A simple Telescope picker
5:25 Dealing with richer data
7:14 A simple previewer
9:05 Displaying richer data
11:29 Nicer display with syntax highlighting
12:20 Talking to Docker
15:20 Tidying it up
16:13 What 'ordinal' actually does
16:53 This could work with any JSON tool
17:47 Adding the action to run an image
22:17 Until next time...

[luadot]

kinda speechless over how good this video is, I hope I can explain something this clearly someday

[beyond]

That was probably the most succinct tutorial/run through I have watch on YouTube, I now need to look at your back catalogue and see what other wonders you have 😊

[WillEhrendreich]

That was absolutely epic. I wish I could have seen this video much much earlier in my neovim life. I remember trying to figure out how to do this sort of thing for when I was picking processes to have DAP attach to. It was doable, but difficult, because I don't know what I don't know. Having this incredible, clear demonstration of how to to make this work will help so much when I can't remember how to do it yet again. Haha. Great work, please do more this was chefs kiss.

[Mawkler]

This is the greatest illustration I've ever seen of how powerful Neovim, Lua and Telescope truly are

[snax]

Awesome video. More neovim stuff please

[JT-mrdb]

This is the epitome of casual brilliance

[lukeemhigh]

Amazing, this could just be the most useful neovim/lua video I've ever seen. Keep it up!

[mananabanana]

That was amazing pedagogy. You're incredibly clear and engaging. Kudos! 😀

[saurabhpradhan]

Using neovim/telescope for years.. but this just blew my mind. Awesome video.

[ChrisPatti]

I really appreciate how you showed the entire intend process rather than skipping it in attempt to save time. Excellent video thank you for making it!

[nickmills]

Been using neovim for a couple of years and vim a lot longer, but I gotta say watching the way you use it for programming is a learning experience. I like the way you work!

[jwr]

Maybe I've not been subbed long enough, but this is the first tutorial/walthrough I've seen from you. I'd love to see some other topics!

[maxreuv]

Educational, informative, and useful – all at the same time. Thank you!

[PhanorColl]

great video.. I've been using neovim for a long time, but never felt like making my own plugins until now.. Please do more neovim videos.. this is EPIC!!

[wjorgegoszcz]

awesome, I loved how well did you explained everything, all the things you need to create a telescope extension, step by step.

[jg_yro]

Mark Holcomb from Periphery taught me guitar and now he’s teaching me neovim.

Just kidding!

I’ve wanted this exact tutorial for years in neovim and it couldn’t be more informative! Thank you!

[MiguelLopez-muss]

this man went next level... nvim telescope instead of the cli fzf... je suis intrigued

[lpil]

Wow Kris! This was my intro to Neovim plugin development and I feel ready to make some useful things!
It was great to see your workflow here

[Timjstewart]

This video cleared up the mystery of developing a Telescope extension for me and got me really excited about all of the extensions I can build. Thank you so much for your clear explanation, for starting simple and progressively making it more and more powerful!

[lvpv]

This is the best "tutorial" on how to start writing plugins to nvim I have seen. THANK YOU so much! Please do more