let certain minor-mode's key bindings override evil's default key bindings

[TheBB]

Originally reported by: Bin Chen (Bitbucket: redguardtoo, GitHub: redguardtoo)

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for example, git-timemachine will use "n", "p", "q" "g" key bindings.

I need a list like evil-set-initial-state, but it's for minor-modes.

for certain minor-modes, I could:

• use the keybindings defined in major-mode, but let this minor mode take precedence

• OR, use emacs keybindings if the minor is loaded and restore its original key bindings if the minor-mode is turned off.

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• Bitbucket: https://bitbucket.org/lyro/evil/issue/511

[TheBB]

Original comment by Frank Fischer (Bitbucket: lyro, GitHub: lyro):

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You can use evil-make-overriding-map to give some keymap a priority higher than Evil's keymaps:

(evil-make-overriding-map some-key-map 'normal)

gives the keymap some-key-map a higher priority

[TheBB]

Original comment by Bin Chen (Bitbucket: redguardtoo, GitHub: redguardtoo):

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doesn't work, here is my setup. use the dev version of evil:

(eval-after-load 'git-timemachine
'(progn
(defvar git-timemachine-mode-map)
(evil-make-override-map git-timemachine-mode-map 'normal)
))

(require 'evil)

;; enable evil-mode
(evil-mode 1)

[TheBB]

Original comment by Frank Fischer (Bitbucket: lyro, GitHub: lyro):

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Please try

(evil-make-override-map git-timemachine-mode-map 'normal)
(add-hook 'git-timemachine-mode-hook #'evil-normalize-keymaps)

Updating key bindings according to some minor-modes or keymaps is very difficult in Emacs, because there is no reliable way (that I know of) to detect whether some minor mode is activated or some keymap becomes active (there are hooks like change-major-mode-hook but nothing equivalent for minor-modes and keymaps). Usually minor modes define some hook minormodename-mode-hook, but not all minor modes do this. That's why it is so difficult to get the right keymaps into the right places at the right time.

The hook for evil-normalize-keymaps forces an update of all Evil keymaps after git-timemachine has become active.

Note that this gives all bindings of git-timemachine higher priority than any Evil binding (but only in normal state). If this is not what you want you could do the following:

1. use evil-add-hjkl-bindings or evil-define-key to add give a few Evil bindings highest priority (see evil-integration.el for some examples)
2. if you need only few bindings from git-timemachine then you can simply replace some Evil bindings by their corresponding git-timemachine bindings in Evil's standard keymaps:

(add-hook 'git-timemachine-hook 
  (lambda ()
    (define-key evil-normal-state-local-map "n" 'git-timemachine-show-next-revision)))

Btw, it might be a good idea to make git-timemachine come up in motion-state instead of normal-state.