How does lazy.nvim update itself?

[farzadmf]

Hey everyone,

After using lazy.nvim for months (basically since it was released), today I was SHOCKED to see something.

From LazyVim release notes, I saw it mentioned lazy.nvim now supports mini plugins by default, so I updated my config, and, well, it doesn't work as expected.

Tried debugging the issue and saw that my lazy.nvim is stock at version 9.14.2, which is super old (I update my plugins at least once a day)

I set up lazy.nvim similar to LazyVim starter:

if not vim.loop.fs_stat(lazypath) then
  vim.fn.system({
    'git',
    'clone',
    '--filter=blob:none',
    '--single-branch',
    'https://github.com/folke/lazy.nvim',
    lazypath,
  })
end

And I had these for the defaults:

defaults = {
  lazy = true,
  version = false,
},

I thought it's because version = false, so I changed it to version = '*'.

A LOT of my plugins were updated after using * (didn't know that either 🙁 ), but no matter what I did, the only way I could make lazy.nvim be updated was by removing its directory, forcing a new clone.

What am I missing here? Why wasn't/isn't lazy.nvim updated?

[folke]

That is not normal.

Also setting version to * will have down-graded a lot of plugins. This is not reccomended.

Does lazy.nvim update now properly? Maybe updating lazy was broken in that version for some reason

[folke]

If you don't sepcify a version, it will always update to the latest

[farzadmf]

So, you mean to not even include version = ... in the setup?

BTW, I'm testing things out now, and now my lazy.nvim seems to be stock at 9.18.1 (commit 6610b15), and I see that the latest is 9.18.2 (commit 761b838), and when I open lazy.nvim's "UI" and do Update, it doesn't get updated to the latest commit.

Wait, just thought of something: should I include lazy.nvim itself as part of my list of plugin specs? I remember packer had something like this (that you needed to include it so that it updates itself)

For me, and the way I set things up:

• lazy.nvim is located in a <nvim-data-path>/plugins directory:

local nvim_data_dir = vim.fn.stdpath('data')
local my_lazy_root_dir = nvim_data_dir .. '/my_lazy'
local lazypath = my_lazy_root_dir .. '/plugins/lazy.nvim'

if not vim.loop.fs_stat(lazypath) then
  vim.fn.system({
    'git',
    'clone',
    '--filter=blob:none',
    '--single-branch',
    'https://github.com/folke/lazy.nvim',
    lazypath,
  })
end
vim.opt.runtimepath:prepend(lazypath)

• The other plugins are inside of my_lazy_root_dir/data/nvim/lazy

So, I guess since lazy.nvim is not there (the second directory where all the plugins are), it won't be updated?

[folke]

ok, that's normal of course. Lazy shold be in the same directory as where you installed your plugins.
Either use the default, or also pass the correct root to the lazy setup call.

[folke]

You don't need to include lazy in your specs, but again, it obvioulsy has to be in the plugins directory that lazy manages, otherwise it can't update itself

[farzadmf]

Makes sense @folke , not sure how it was even updated to 9.14.2 before 🤔

Changed my path to be like this:

local lazypath = my_lazy_root_dir .. '/data/nvim/lazy/lazy.nvim'

And I think it's working now

[farzadmf]

Closing the discussion as my issue seems to be resolved now