[layouts] Emacs 27 over-rides workspace keybindings gt and gT

[practicalli-johnny]

Description

From Emacs 27.1 onward tab bar functionality is built in and it seems that Evil normal key bindings are over-riding the existing keybindings for eyebrowse-next-window-config and eyebrowse-previous-window-config

Reproduction guide 🪲

• Install Emacs 27.1 or greater
• Start Emacs
• SPC l w 2 to create a second workspace
• SPC f f to open a new file in this workspace (so you can tell easily see workspaces switching)
• g t in Evil normal state should cycle between the layouts

Observed behaviour: 👀 💔
g t in Evil normal state does not do anything (unless Emacs tabs were enabled)

Expected behaviour: ❤️ 😄
g t in Evil normal state cycles forward through the workspaces, g T cycles in reverse through the workspaces.

System Info 💻

• OS: gnu/linux
• Emacs: 28.0.50
• Spacemacs: 0.300.0
• Spacemacs branch: develop (rev. 1660527)
• Graphic display: t
• Distribution: spacemacs
• Editing style: vim
• Completion: helm
• Layers:

(asciidoc
 (auto-completion :variables auto-completion-enable-help-tooltip t auto-completion-enable-snippets-in-popup t auto-completion-enable-sort-by-usage t)
 (clojure :variables clojure-toplevel-inside-comment-form t cider-overlays-use-font-lock t clojure-enable-linters 'clj-kondo)
 command-log colors csv emacs-lisp emoji
 (git :variables git-magit-status-fullscreen t magit-diff-refine-hunk 'all)
 github graphviz
 (helm :variables helm-follow-mode-persistent t)
 html json markdown multiple-cursors theming
 (org :variables org-enable-github-support t org-enable-bootstrap-support t org-enable-reveal-js-support t org-want-todo-bindings t org-enable-org-journal-support t org-journal-dir "~/projects/journal/" org-journal-file-format "%Y-%m-%d" org-journal-date-prefix "#+TITLE: " org-journal-date-format "%A, %B %d %Y" org-journal-time-prefix "* " org-journal-time-format "" org-journal-carryover-items "TODO=\"TODO\"|TODO=\"DOING\"|TODO=\"BLOCKED\"|TODO=\"REVIEW\"")
 (ranger :variables ranger-show-preview t ranger-show-hidden t ranger-cleanup-eagerly t ranger-cleanup-on-disable t ranger-ignored-extensions
         '("mkv" "flv" "iso" "mp4"))
 (shell :variables shell-default-shell 'eshell shell-default-height 30 shell-default-position 'bottom)
 (spacemacs-layouts :variables spacemacs-layouts-restrict-spc-tab t persp-autokill-buffer-on-remove 'kill-weak)
 spell-checking
 (syntax-checking :variables syntax-checking-use-original-bitmaps t)
 (treemacs :variables treemacs-indentation 1 treemacs-use-filewatch-mode t treemacs-use-follow-mode t)
 (version-control :variables version-control-diff-tool 'diff-hl version-control-global-margin t))

• System configuration features: XPM JPEG TIFF GIF PNG RSVG CAIRO SOUND GPM DBUS GSETTINGS GLIB NOTIFY INOTIFY ACL LIBSELINUX GNUTLS LIBXML2 FREETYPE HARFBUZZ M17N_FLT LIBOTF ZLIB TOOLKIT_SCROLL_BARS GTK3 X11 XDBE XIM MODULES THREADS XWIDGETS LIBSYSTEMD JSON PDUMPER LCMS2 GMP

Backtrace 🐾

<<BACKTRACE IF RELEVANT>>

[emacs18]

Following is found in evil-maps.el which is part of evil package:

(when (featurep 'tab-bar)
  (define-key evil-normal-state-map "gt" 'tab-bar-switch-to-next-tab)
  (define-key evil-normal-state-map "gT" 'tab-bar-switch-to-prev-tab))

Since only emacs 27 has the tab-bar feature, above code is relevant only on emacs 27.
Above seems to shadow the following key bindings found in spacemacs-layouts layer:

      (define-key evil-motion-state-map "gt" 'eyebrowse-next-window-config)
      (define-key evil-motion-state-map "gT" 'eyebrowse-prev-window-config)

[emacs18]

Oops. I did not see the fix until now. The fix mentioned above changed spacemacs key bindings to avoid the clash. Sorry.

[duianto]

There's also an issue with the gt key binding in a magit buffer, where it's bound to:
magit-jump-to-tracked

It means that, switching between workspaces stops when one of them shows a magit buffer.

[practicalli-johnny]

@emacs18 I closed the PR to change the keys to g> and g> as I wanted to see if there were any other options before changing keybindings that have been around for a long time.

My current workaround is to define user keybindings for workspaces in the dotspacemacs/user-config section of .spacemacs

  ;; Toggle workspaces forward/backwards
  (spacemacs/set-leader-keys "ow" 'eyebrowse-next-window-config)
  (spacemacs/set-leader-keys "oW" 'eyebrowse-last-window-config)

What are the options for resolving the workspace keybinding conflicts?

On a side note: I also noticed that gk in a magit commit buffer (COMMIT_EDITMSG) is over-ridden by evil-previous-visual-line at first, however, by switching to Evil insert state and back to Evil normal state gkbecomes git-commit-prev-message. I don't really understand that behavior.

[practicalli-johnny]

There is no fix for this issue as the initial proposal for alternate keybindings was correctly rejected (my suggestion wasnt that good).

Ideally I would like to disable the tab-bar feature in Emacs then the workspace keybindings will not be over-ridden by a feature I find far less useful.

[travisbhartwell]

I was able to work around this for myself by putting the following in dotspacemacs/user-config:

  (with-eval-after-load 'evil-maps
    (when (featurep 'tab-bar)
      (define-key evil-normal-state-map "gt" nil)
      (define-key evil-normal-state-map "gT" nil)))

This removed the binding that shadowed the Spacemacs binding.

[github-actions]

This issue has been automatically marked as stale because it has not had recent activity. It will be closed if no further activity occurs. Please let us know if this issue is still valid!

[practicalli-johnny]

I still consider this an issue as it impacts my daily workflow

[mixmixmix]

Being able quickly switch workspaces is essential to use layouts-workspaces workflow correctly. Without @travisbhartwell hack I quickly kept regressing to using layouts only.

Is there any obstacle in implementing that user config as a layout initialisation option? Alternatively, @practicalli-john why did you say that your suggestion "wasn't that good"?