Startup Error "List or Blob required"

[robbielyman]

Description

When opening a LaTeX file in a project I get the following error:

After this it appears that VimTeX fails to load; expected commands like gf, \ll and others do not work, and :VimtexInfo returns "Not an editor command".

Steps to reproduce

Minimal test file:

vim.g.maplocallleader = '\\'
vim.cmd 'packadd packer.nvim'

return require('packer').startup(function(use)
	use 'lervag/vimtex'
end)

Minimal test tex file: (opening test.tex as a new file works fine. After writing this and invoking :e preamble.tex I get the error above.)

\documentclass{article}
\input{preamble}

\begin{document}
\input{content}
\end{document}

Expected behavior

Vimtex to load

Actual behavior

The error mentioned above:

Do you use a latexmkrc file?

No

VimtexInfo

This is what I get when running `:VimtexInfo` on the above file after saving it.
I also get a similar error to the one described above.

System info
  OS: macOS 11.5.2 (20G95)
  Vim version: NVIM v0.6.0-dev+368-g9337fff8a
  Has clientserver: true
  Servername: /var/folders/2y/hwll5x9j6271lr30klvck8f80000gn/T/nvimmPPTRh/0

If I instead run :VimtexInfo on a completely blank TeX document I get

System info
  OS: macOS 11.5.2 (20G95)
  Vim version: NVIM v0.6.0-dev+368-g9337fff8a
  Has clientserver: true
  Servername: /var/folders/2y/hwll5x9j6271lr30klvck8f80000gn/T/nvimmPPTRh/0

VimTeX project: test2
  base: test2.tex
  root: /Users/rylee/.config/nvim
  tex: /Users/rylee/.config/nvim/test2.tex
  main parser: current file
  document class: 
  compiler: latexmk
    engine: -pdf
    options:
      -verbose
      -file-line-error
      -synctex=1
      -interaction=nonstopmode
    callback: 1
    continuous: 1
    executable: latexmk
  viewer: General
  qf method: LaTeX logfile

[clason]

I cannot reproduce this (same Neovim version on macOS). Make sure you don't have stale packages lying around (set packpath= in your init.vim and add vimtex to rtp directly as in the issue template).

Also, how did you install Neovim?

[robbielyman]

brew install --HEAD. I'll try that suggestion now

[clason]

Can you try building directly from the repo?

[robbielyman]

sure, I can try that. It started breaking on an earlier version of neovim after I did :PackerSync.

[clason]

yeah, there were some vim patches related to blobs that got ported recently, but I wouldn't expect such breakage.

[robbielyman]

I built neovim from source, and now I get the same error with the following init.vim:

set nocompatible
set packpath=
let &runtimepath  = '~/.local/share/nvim/site/pack/packer/start/vimtex,' . &runtimepath
let &runtimepath .= ',~/.local/share/nvim/site/pack/packer/start/vimtex/after'
filetype plugin indent on
syntax enable

[clason]

Hmm, that's the same I do. Maybe I'm not following the steps exactly. Could you make them more explicit ("step 1, step 2, step 3... crash?")

(Step 1 should be nvim --clean -u init.vim ...)

[robbielyman]

Step 1: nvim --clean -u ~/.config/nvim/minit.vim (that's what I've called it)
Step 2: :e test.tex
Step 3: Type in

\documentclass{article}
\input{preamble.tex}
\begin{document}
arst
\end{document}

Step 4: :w, :e preamble.tex gives the crash.

ETA: I tried (in my normal neovim setup) removing and reinstalling vimtex with Packer, but the problem persists.

[clason]

Nope, sorry, can't reproduce. Do I actually need to type it (because I just copy&paste, because I'm lazy...)

[robbielyman]

Surely you shouldn't need to type it.

[robbielyman]

Doing commit = "fbe94cd3eaed89d6c1236af486466b1fcc3b82c9" in Packer fixes the issue for me, but any newer and I still get the error. So for me the problem commit is 507924a

[lervag]

So, first: Sorry for this. I recently made some changes to the kpsewhich caching which makes old cache files invalid. I documented it in the commit log and was planning to announce this in the next release. However, I now see that it is better to give a proper and helpful error message.

Please update, and if required, run :VimtexClearCache kpsewhich.