Neovim fail to open file via scp - Undefined variable: b:netrw_method

Question

I am opening a remote file with this command:

[n]vim scp://user@host/relative_file

Vim (8.2) opens the file correctly, but Neovim (v0.5.0-dev+1186-g8665a96b9) just shows a blank file and a blank NetrwMessage buffer. When I try to open it again with :e in Neovim, an error is printed:

Error detected while processing function netrw#Nread[4]..netrw#NetRead:
line  261:
E121: Undefined variable: b:netrw_method
E116: Invalid arguments for function s:NetrwGetFile
E15: Invalid expression: s:NetrwGetFile(readcmd, tmpfile, b:netrw_method)

Seems the problem of b:netrw_method but I can't find useful information about it on the Internet. How to solve this error?

Extra Info

If I use :w to write, the remote file is successfully overwritten by an empty file.

I am on a Windows machine.

Answer 1

I encountered this same error and found that my copy of the netrw plugin .vim/plugin/netrwPlugin.vim was extremely out of date. I've been carrying around a copy of my .vim directory for years. The latest installed versions of vim have been advancing but my old copy of the plugin wasn't.

Updating the plugin file fixed my issue.

https://github.com/eiginn/netrw/blob/master/plugin/netrwPlugin.vim