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I would like to make a plugin for Neovim that does some pretty expensive processing for a text in a file. I would need to keep processed data as well as a hash signature of a file (to avoid processing of the data without need).
Is there a convention where to keep such information generated by a plugin?
There is no vim convention for this per se, but there are various operating system conventions.
On neovim, your best bet is probably stdpath('cache'). On linux, this usually resolves to ~/.cache/nvim. If needed, you can create a subdir for your plugin like
let l:dir = stdpath('cache') . '/myplugin'
if !isdirectory(l:dir)
call mkdir(l:dir, 'p')
endif
In vim, you can emulate stdpath (for linux at least) using
let l:stdpath_cache = (empty($XDG_CACHE_HOME)
\ ? $HOME . '/.cache'
\ : $XDG_CACHE_HOME) . '/vim'
Some plugins write to their install directory but this is not a good practice, as plugins can be installed to system directories to which the user does not have access.
~/.cache, agreed. For Windows perhaps $USERPROFILE\AppData\Local\cache ... though I'm less sure of that one. (The dir does exist on my main Win box, FWIW.)
stdpath("cache") on windows points to $USERPROFILE\AppData\Local\Temp\nvim but using that Windows temp dir is like using /tmp on *nix...and not a great choice here, IMO.
stdpath(), I guess the problem then is neovim's choice of paths on windows is inappropriate.
$USERPROFILE\AppData\Local always exists. It's a standard path meant for, as it says, application data and creating a subdirectory for your particular application is SOP. Though I agree in principle to what you're saying I wouldn't consider this a hard coded path (plus it uses an env var which means it is not hardcoded). (The "cache" part can be dropped if it's not guaranteed to be there...which I haven't googled. Also, I forgot the "{myplugin}" part in my original comment.)
stdpath() I'd argue that what it returns is just as hardcoded. :) Well, except for the platform specific part. That was implied in everything I said, i.e. the plugin would use if has('win32') or equivalent when choosing the system-created dir in which to create an app data subdir.
tempname()? Or (*nix) use a hidden directory like~/.mypluginor/path/to/script/.mycacheor something;~/.cache/mypluginalso…:help stdpath()