xenodium/company-async-files

company-files with an async backend

Company Async Files

company-mode has a builtin company-files backend that allows for file autocompletion. However this backend is synchronous, and therefore can block the UI and leads to freezes. In my case working with large slow file systems this made company-files completley unusable, Especially with M-x shell which relies heavily on file path completion.

company-async-files provides the same completion as company-files, but asynchronously uses find in the background to get the candidates. This ensures that your user thread is never blocked by your completion backend, which is the way it should be. As an added bonus, this backend will display information about the current candidate in the minbuffer echo area.

compatibility

Since this backend relies on GNU find, it is not compatible with Windows and does not yet support TRAMP.

usage

Add company-async-files to company-backends afte installing this package. company-async-files is smart enough to know when the symbol at point is a valid filename. Therefore it is safe to use at the begining of company-backends as the first backend for completion.

customization

By default, company-async-files tries to provide two levels deep for completion candidates. However this depth search can take too long to be usefull when working on large filesystems. Therefore the depth search will be cancelled after company-async-files-depth-search-timeout (which defaults to 500 ms). If timeout occurs, company-async-files will only provide candiates in the immediate directory. This timeout value can be customized to suite your preference.