[Feature]: Configurable file metadata columns in directory listing

[Goutham-AR]

Is your feature request related to a problem?

When working in an oil buffer, I often want a bit more context about each entry without having to leave the directory view. In particular, it is useful to see metadata such as file size, modified time, permissions, owner/group, etc., while navigating and editing the listing.

Describe the solution you'd like

I’d like the directory list to optionally display file metadata columns, similar to how Dired shows additional file information.

Ideally this would be configurable, for example, with settings like the following:

• enable/disable metadata display
• choose which columns to show
• possible columns: size, modified time, permissions, owner, group, maybe others later

Describe alternatives you've considered

Keeping the current minimal listing and using the ls command for metadata listing.

Priority

Medium - Would be helpful

Feature Category

• File/Directory operations
• Navigation improvements
• UI/UX enhancements
• Keyboard shortcuts/Vim bindings
• Performance improvements
• Configuration options
• Integration with other extensions
• Other

Use Case

In my workflow, I use oil as the main file browser and file operation surface. Having that context directly in the listing reduces context switching and makes the directory view more informative.

Mockups/Examples

A similar experience would be Emacs dired, where file metadata is shown inline in the directory listing.
For example, a row could look like:
-rw-r--r-- user staff 12K Mar 14 14:23 filename.ts drwxr-xr-x user staff 4.0K Mar 10 09:10 src/

Additional Context

If this feature sounds like a good fit for the project, I’d be happy to work on an implementation and open a PR.

[corwinm]

This looks like it would be similar to oil.nvim's columns. I would start with a similar implementation with the available options being the same as defined in oil's https://github.com/stevearc/oil.nvim?tab=readme-ov-file#options "icon", "permissions", "size", and "mtime".
With all columns enabled in oil.nvim, I get a UI like this:

I don't personally use either with columns so I hadn't looked at what that implementation might look like here.

I would be ok with the columns you suggested as they appear to be a wider set of columns than oil.nvim supports.

One thing that makes this complicated is that this extensions defaults is to show an the icons and I would want to retain that as the default setting.

If this all sounds good and you want to work on an implementation that sounds good to me. Otherwise, let me know and I will look at what it would take to get this implemented.

[corwinm]

A nice to have would be a way to implement something similar to https://github.com/stevearc/oil.nvim/blob/master/doc/recipes.md#toggle-file-detail-view where it would be easy to toggle the extra columns on and off. We could either implement a toggleColumns command or expose a setColumns command that would allow the above recipe to be implemented in roughly the same way.

[Goutham-AR]

@corwinm, Thanks, this sounds great!

I can take this on and align the implementation with oil.nvim-style columns to start. I’ll use the same initial options: 'icon', 'permissions', 'size', and 'mtime'.

Plan:

• Add configurable columns via settings (default keeps current behavior with icon shown)
• Keep icon-only as the default so existing UI is unchanged
• Implement column rendering in the oil buffer view similar to oil.nvim
• Add a command for quick detail toggling.

If this sounds good, I’ll start the implementation and open a PR.

[corwinm]

@Goutham-AR that sounds good!