How can I use plugins from within a plugin?

[brandoncc]

Thanks for your work on this awesome plugin manager, which works great!

I moved my config to a plugin so that it is super portable to any nvim install, and I would like to be able to have a single :PackerSync install both my plugin and then any plugins that it specifies. Is that possible? I currently have to install, then close nvim, then reopen and sync again. After this, I have all of the plugins I expect.

Here is my current configuration:

https://github.com/brandoncc/nvim-config-as-plugin/blob/main/lua/brandoncc/lv/lv-config.lua (this is the plugin that specifies other plugins)
https://github.com/ChristianChiarulli/LunarVim/blob/master/lua/plugins.lua#L250-L253 (this is where LunarVim brings in my plugin)

This is the configuration I have that sets my LunarVim user_plugins and results in my plugin coming in:

O.user_plugins = {
  { "brandoncc/nvim-config-as-plugin" }
}

I have tried things like this:

O.user_plugins = {
  { "brandoncc/nvim-config-as-plugin", run = function()
    vim.cmd(':luafile ~/.config/nvim/lv-config.lua')
    vim.cmd(':PackerCompile')
    vim.cmd(':PackerSync')
  end }
}

Which successfully ran sync twice, but the sub-plugins were not seen/installed.

Am I trying to do something that is impossible?

[wbthomason]

This is an interesting use case! I think you should be able to hack this in reasonably easily, but I will admit that packer hasn't been used this way (to my knowledge) before. There's been discussion of adding support for a file specifying plugin requirements to packer, but that's a pretty major feature and I haven't gotten around to it yet.

Right now, I think you could do this by:

1. Specify your main plugin in your main packer file, using the manual config method (i.e. not the startup function)
2. In your main plugin, require packer and just call use with your sub-plugins somewhere in a runtime files (e.g. in your_plugin/plugin/add_requirements.lua. Your main plugin will need to be eagerly-loaded (or at least loaded before you use any packer commands) for this to get sourced
3. Run packer commands as usual and you should see the sub-plugins in the managed set

[brandoncc]

Thank you!