Per project settings in nvim

I recently started using nvim as my editor, and along with it ALE (Asynchronous Lint Engine) to run my code linters, usually eslint.

One of my project uses xo which is a preconfigured wrapper around eslint. ALE was detecting the eslint binary but not any configuration and so was spouting errors. The solution is to only enable xo on this project.

Enabling project specific config files

In your main config file add the following lines:

set exrc
set secure

exrc allows loading local executing local rc files.

secure disallows the use of :autocmd, shell and write commands in local .vimrc files.

Now in your project specific file you can set:

let g:ale_linters = {
  'javascript': ['xo'],
}

Note that the name of your config files matter. Neovim looks for an .nvimrc , vim looks for a .vimrc or .exrc files.