NeoVim: Following the instructions in ":h clipboard-wsl" not work? It shows "no provider" but also "ok" in ":checkhealth"?

Question

I am using neovim on archlinux/WSL2, and try to communicate with the Windows clipboard in neovim.

Following the instructions in :h clipboard-wsl, I filled in init.lua with code:

vim.g.clipboard = {
 name = 'WslClipboard',
 copy = {
 ["+"] = 'clip.exe',
 ["*"] = 'clip.exe',
 },
 paste = {
 ["+"] = 'powershell.exe -c [Console]::Out.Write($(Get-Clipboard -Raw).tostring().replace("`r", ""))',
 ["*"] = 'powershell.exe -c [Console]::Out.Write($(Get-Clipboard -Raw).tostring().replace("`r", ""))',
},
 cache_enabled = 0,
 }

But when I try to yank using "+y, I get "Clipboard: No Provider". However running :checkhealth, I get:

Clipboard (optional)
   - OK Clipboard tool found: WslClipboard

If I run echo "hello world" | clip.exe in the terminal, all work fine: I can paste "hello world" in windows side. And so is the powershell.exe ... command.

After I yank something, I can't find the content in '+' register or '*' register, they are just missing in the result of :reg. So I'm inclined to think the clipboard function is not trigerred, then I tried to install xclip, and luckily the problem is solved.

Answer 1

Well I fix the problem by simply installing xclip. I don't know why, and I used to think that is unneeded because I'm not going to use the clipboard in X11 but the one in Windows.

Answer 2

Try using win32yank its much faster than using powershell and xclip.

Download the win32yank binary here https://github.com/equalsraf/win32yank/releases then copy it to /usr/local/bin dont forget, should be chmod +x win32yank.exe.

After that add this to your neovim config.

    vim.g.clipboard = {
        name = "win32yank-wsl",
        copy = {
            ["+"] = "win32yank.exe -i --crlf",
            ["*"] = "win32yank.exe -i --crlf",
        },
        paste = {
            ["+"] = "win32yank.exe -o --lf",
            ["*"] = "win32yank.exe -o --lf",
        },
        cache_enabled = true,
    }