using the plugin "offline" using file://

[daire-byrne]

Hi,

I am trying to use wezterm ressurect but with a cloned git repo changing the location to "file://"

But if I try to do that with wezterm.dev (which ressurect uses), I just get an error:

16:42:59.373 INFO plugin > Cloned file:///u/daire/dev-wezterm into "/u/daire/.local/share/wezterm/plugins/filesCssZssZssZsusZsdairesZsdev-wezterm"
16:42:59.375 ERROR logging > lua: dev.wezterm: Could not find plugin directory
16:42:59.375 ERROR plugin > Failed to require filesCssZssZssZsusZsdairesZsdev-wezterm which is stored in "/u/daire/.local/share/wezterm/plugins/filesCssZssZssZsusZsdairesZsdev-wezterm": runtime error: .../filesCssZssZssZsusZsdairesZsdev-wezterm/plugin/init.lua:127: attempt to concatenate a nil value (local 'path')
stack traceback:
[C]: in metamethod 'concat'
.../filesCssZssZssZsusZsdairesZsdev-wezterm/plugin/init.lua:127: in upvalue '_set_wezterm_require_path'
.../filesCssZssZssZsusZsdairesZsdev-wezterm/plugin/init.lua:204: in local 'init'
.../filesCssZssZssZsusZsdairesZsdev-wezterm/plugin/init.lua:209: in main chunk
[C]: in function 'require'
[C]: in field 'require'
[string "/u/daire/.wezterm.lua"]:3: in main chunk

Can this plugin not be made to work "offline" without any internet access? Or is there an option I need to supply?

Cheers.

[ChrisGVE]

Hello,
Sorry for the late reply. This plugin works offline, but when installing plugins, you need to install them via the wezterm plugin system. Once it is installed, you don't need internet access, except if you want to update your plugins.

[daire-byrne]

If I understand, you mean to have internet access initially to add the plugin via http, and then once wezterm has pulled and installed it will work offline? That's not actually my experience of most wezterm plugins (they like to git pull before loading).

But regardless, what I'm trying to do is have a copy of the plugin inside a corporate network so that lots of users without internet access can install and use it. To do this, we can use the "file://" reference to the plugin source and this works with most plugins, except wezterm.dev (which other plugins like resurrect use).

[ChrisGVE]

Usually, plugins are refreshed with wezterm.plugin.update_all() in your wezterm.lua, which triggers Wezterm to refresh all its plugins. I'm not aware of plugins that execute a pull themselves (I can imagine all kinds of problems when doing this at the plugin level, but that's another topic).

Now, it is true that the dev.wezterm plugin was written to facilitate locating the plugin and adding its path to the require paths, so that plugins using dev.wezterm can find their modules. I've written it, expecting that plugins would be installed in the standard Wezterm location. This is obviously not your use case.

While I'm thinking about solving your problem, please confirm one thing. When you use the file://, is that something you do for single-file plugins, or are they composed of multiple files? Additionally, could you provide an example of a plugin that works and explain how you utilize the file:// reference to make it work? This will help me ensure I am looking in the right direction.

Currently, I'm considering implementing an override function that would enable matching every individual plugin to a specific location, rather than allowing the plugin to determine its own path. Additionally, I want to ensure that the plugin authors do not have to modify their plugin solely for this use case.

[ChrisGVE]

If I understand, you mean to have internet access initially to add the plugin via http, and then once wezterm has pulled and installed it will work offline? That's not actually my experience of most wezterm plugins (they like to git pull before loading).

But regardless, what I'm trying to do is have a copy of the plugin inside a corporate network so that lots of users without internet access can install and use it. To do this, we can use the "file://" reference to the plugin source and this works with most plugins, except wezterm.dev (which other plugins like resurrect use).

I wanted to clarify one thing: when you say having a copy inside a corporate network, you mean that while users have no access to the internet, they have access to the repos, which they find via file://repo?

[daire-byrne]

Yes, exactly. So take the simple "wezterm-replay" plugin - we can git clone the repo, put it somewhere accessible by all users (a network share) and then add it to the .wezterm.lua

local wezterm_replay = wezterm.plugin.require("file:///home/daire/wezterm-replay")
13:56:17.946 INFO plugin > Cloned file:///home/daire/wezterm-replay into "/home/daire/.local/share/wezterm/plugins/filesCssZssZssZshomesZsdairesZswezterm-replay"

But using the "file://" path with dev.wezterm (and hence resurrect) doesn't work.

If I temporarily open up the internet access on the same machine and use the more common https:// github link, it works fine.

[ChrisGVE]

I've published a new version that should resolve your problem. I'd like to know if it works for you. I've updated the README.md, but here is the short version.

1. Require dev.wezterm (even if you don't use it)
2. Create a dictionary for substitutions:

local subst = {
  https = "file",
  chrisgve = "daire",
  MLFlexer = "daire",
}

3. Apply the dictionary dev.set_substitutions(subst)
4. Require the other plugins

What it will do is look for the substituted keywords to figure out the folder name where the plugins are stored. In your case, not in "https..." but in "file...", and not with the author name, but with "...daire...". For resurrect.wezterm, the author name is MLFlexer, but for other authors, you'll have to check their init.lua to see what string they use.

[daire-byrne]

So I added this to my .wezterm.lua

local dev = wezterm.plugin.require("file:///u/daire/dev-wezterm")
local subst = {
https = "file",
chrisgve = "daire",
MLFlexer = "daire",
}
dev.set_substitutions(subst)

And now it doesn't blow up but it does log this:

wezterm
16:23:27.293 INFO plugin > Cloned file:///u/daire/dev-wezterm into "/u/daire/.local/share/wezterm/plugins/filesCssZssZssZsusZsdairesZsdev-wezterm"
16:23:27.297 ERROR logging > lua: dev.wezterm: Could not find plugin directory
16:23:27.408 ERROR logging > lua: dev.wezterm: Could not find plugin directory

Then I added ressurect using file:// and it insisted on trying to connect to github:

local resurrect = wezterm.plugin.require("file:///u/daire/resurrect-wezterm")

16:30:25.779 INFO plugin > Cloned file:///u/daire/resurrect-wezterm into "/u/daire/.local/share/wezterm/plugins/filesCssZssZssZsusZsdairesZsresurrect-wezterm"
16:30:25.843 ERROR plugin > Failed to require filesCssZssZssZsusZsdairesZsresurrect-wezterm which is stored in "/u/daire/.local/share/wezterm/plugins/filesCssZssZssZsusZsdairesZsresurrect-wezterm": failed to connect to github.com: Connection refused; class=Os (2)

I tried to change the resurrect-wezterm/plugin/init.lua to use file for dev.wezterm too but that didn't help:

local dev = wezterm.plugin.require("file:///u/daire/dev-wezterm")

Definitely an improvement, but I haven't quite got it over the finish line yet...

[ChrisGVE]

Thanks for the detailed trace, that was really helpful. I'm glad that there is at least some improvement.

I've made a few changes that, I hope, should improve the situation. I've added a few breadcrumbs such that you can have a bit more info in the debug log, including message for what works as well.

I'm a bit worried about the error "failed to connect to github.com", I did not think about it, but indeed plugins will eventually try to access github and the only thing you can do is patch them (otherwise you'll stay fixed on one version only) like you did.

Let me know if the new version works better, or worse for you and let me have the logs so that I can go deeper into the problem.

[daire-byrne]

Yea, I have no problem with making changes to the https://github addresses (-> file://) in the local offline copy.

I did that for both dev.wezterm and ressurect.wezterm (https://github -> file://)

12:10:27.400 INFO plugin > Cloned file:///u/daire/dev-wezterm into "/u/daire/.local/share/wezterm/plugins/filesCssZssZssZsusZsdairesZsdev-wezterm"
12:10:27.403 WARN logging > lua: dev.wezterm: init: dev.wezterm plugin path not found
12:10:27.404 INFO logging > lua: dev.wezterm: set_substitutions: dev.wezterm path found
12:10:27.662 INFO plugin > Cloned file:///u/daire/resurrect-wezterm into "/u/daire/.local/share/wezterm/plugins/filesCssZssZssZsusZsdairesZsresurrect-wezterm"
12:10:27.663 INFO logging > lua: dev.wezterm: Keywords before substitution: github, MLFlexer, resurrect, wezterm
12:10:27.664 INFO logging > lua: dev.wezterm: Keywords after substitution: github, daire, resurrect, wezterm
12:10:27.666 ERROR logging > lua: dev.wezterm: Could not find plugin directory
12:10:27.666 ERROR plugin > Failed to require filesCssZssZssZsusZsdairesZsresurrect-wezterm which is stored in "/u/daire/.local/share/wezterm/plugins/filesCssZssZssZsusZsdairesZsresurrect-wezterm": runtime error: ...CssZssZssZsusZsdairesZsresurrect-wezterm/plugin/init.lua:18: module 'resurrect.state_manager' not found:
no field package.preload['resurrect.state_manager']
no file '/u/daire/.config/wezterm/resurrect/state_manager.lua'
no file '/u/daire/.config/wezterm/resurrect/state_manager/init.lua'
no file '/u/daire/.local/share/wezterm/plugins/resurrect/state_manager/plugin/init.lua'
no file '/u/daire/.wezterm/resurrect/state_manager.lua'
no file '/u/daire/.wezterm/resurrect/state_manager/init.lua'
no file '/usr/local/share/lua/5.4/resurrect/state_manager.lua'
no file '/usr/local/share/lua/5.4/resurrect/state_manager/init.lua'
no file '/usr/local/lib/lua/5.4/resurrect/state_manager.lua'
no file '/usr/local/lib/lua/5.4/resurrect/state_manager/init.lua'
no file './resurrect/state_manager.lua'
no file './resurrect/state_manager/init.lua'
no file '/u/daire/.local/share/wezterm/plugins/filesCssZssZssZsusZsdairesZsdev-wezterm/plugin/resurrect/state_manager.lua'

Maybe we don't need the "github" substitution anymore?

[ChrisGVE]

That's annoying. There are two interesting lines in the log:

12:10:27.663 INFO logging > lua: dev.wezterm: Keywords before substitution: github, MLFlexer, resurrect, wezterm
12:10:27.664 INFO logging > lua: dev.wezterm: Keywords after substitution: github, daire, resurrect, wezterm

dev.wezterm will determine that a plugin has been found when it can match all keywords to a section of the path where the plugin is stored. With the substitution, the plugin will replace all existing keywords with their substitution, and leave unchanged the keywords that have no substitution.

Now, this means that, and it's on me, I was wrong with the substitutions I gave you; we shouldn't have "http" = "file", but "github"="file". I've updated my plugin to stop looking for the keyword "http", but "github" instead, which is what most plugin authors are doing.

So hopefully the next attempt should be the one 🤞🏻

[daire-byrne]

Apologies for the long delay - holidays.

Getting back to this now but have somewhat lost my train of thought... I pulled down the latest version and now the error looks like this:

15:01:27.931  WARN   logging > lua: dev.wezterm: init: dev.wezterm plugin path not found
15:01:27.931  ERROR  logging > lua: dev.wezterm: Could not find plugin directory
15:01:27.955  WARN   logging > lua: dev.wezterm: init: dev.wezterm plugin path not found
15:01:27.956  ERROR  logging > lua: dev.wezterm: Could not find plugin directory
15:01:27.957  ERROR  mux::connui > Configuration Error: runtime error: .../filesCssZssZssZsusZsdairesZsdev-wezterm/plugin/init.lua:149: attempt to concatenate a nil value (local 'path')
stack traceback:
	.../filesCssZssZssZsusZsdairesZsdev-wezterm/plugin/init.lua:149: in upvalue '_set_wezterm_require_path'
	.../filesCssZssZssZsusZsdairesZsdev-wezterm/plugin/init.lua:253: in function 'filesCssZssZssZsusZsdairesZsdev-wezterm.set_substitutions'
	[string "/u/daire/.wezterm.lua"]:10: in main chunk

My ~/.weztrm.lua:

local wezterm = require 'wezterm'

local dev = wezterm.plugin.require("file:///u/daire/dev-wezterm")
local subst = {
  https = "file",
  chrisgve = "daire",
  MLFlexer = "daire",
}
dev.set_substitutions(subst)
local resurrect = wezterm.plugin.require("file:///u/daire/resurrect-wezterm")

And then I have edited the devterm-resurrect repo and swapped out all https:// references for file:///u/daire/dev-wezterm or file:///u/daire/resurrect-wezterm accordingly.

[ChrisGVE]

Apologies for the delay too, I've been underwater for a while now.

I've pushed a new version, it does three things:

• it fixed the symptom on line 149 by ensuring we ignore a null string
• it has a more lenient list of keywords, hopefully this will work
• if, in the substitution table, you set the value for a keyword to "", the keyword is dropped from the search list

I hope this time it will work for you. And again sorry to have limited time for this debugging and to setup a test environment that mirrors yours.