Saving results in empty file

[greaka]

Summary

Whenever I want to edit .rs files, I end up with an empty file.

Upon saving the buffer, I get the message "file modified by an external process. Use w! to overwrite". w! doesn't change the outcome.

It is 100% reproducible and only occurs on .rs files. Toml files among others are fine. I don't know if LSP can be a source of problems, but I can tell that this happens with LSP disabled/enabled/installed/uninstalled all the same.

I have this issue for almost a year now. I hoped for a magical fix, but now I'm here.
I only have this issue on one of my machines and am happy to help debug this.

Reproduction Steps

I tried this:

1. hx src/lib.rs
2. :w or :w!

I expected this to happen:
The file is saved as I see it displayed.

Instead, this happened:
The content of both the file and the buffer are deleted.

Helix log

~/.cache/helix/helix.log

2023-10-13T12:05:35.017 helix_view::editor [ERROR] editor error: file modified by an external process, use :w! to overwrite

Yes, this is the entire log.

Platform

Arch Linux

Terminal Emulator

wezterm 20230712-072601-f4abf8fd

Helix Version

helix 23.05

[kirawi]

We use mtime to detect if the file was changed after opening the file. I suspect that it's something related to your system but I'm not familiar enough with linux to say.

[the-mikedavis]

Do you have any custom language configuration - anything in ~/.config/helix/languages.toml?

[greaka]

Yes, I do have a custom language configuration. However, that one is present on all machines.

greaka@greaka-arch-desktop ~ % diff ~/.config/helix/ /git/dotfiles/helix
Common subdirectories: /home/greaka/.config/helix/themes and /git/dotfiles/helix/themes
greaka@greaka-arch-desktop ~ % /usr/bin/cat ~/.config/helix/languages.toml
[[language]]
name = "rust"
formatter = { command = "cargo", args = ["+nightly", "fmt"] }

[language-server.rust-analyzer.config.check]
command = "clippy"
greaka@greaka-arch-desktop ~ %

[the-mikedavis]

External formatters pass in the file through stdin and expect the formatted result through stdout. cargo-fmt currently doesn't support that: rust-lang/rustfmt#5071.

[greaka]

Is there a workaround? My rustfmt.toml causes errors in helix without nightly

[greaka]

I removed the setting and even tried hx -c /dev/null but this doesn't fix the issue though.

[the-mikedavis]

You should format in a separate terminal/window with cargo +nightly format.

-c only affects the editor config (config.toml) and not the language configuration (languages.toml). You should remove that formatter line from the languages.toml. If it's still happening make sure you don't have a .helix/languages.toml that has the same configuration

[greaka]

I have a non-default xdg home directory that helix respects. Found and fixed.