How create keybindings for Evil command line?

Question

For example, I have created a keybinding for Emacs mini-buffer, that will receive the [f9]-key as a confirmation (usually the RET-key).

 (define-key minibuffer-local-map (kbd "<f9>") 'exit-minibuffer)  

I use Evil mode, so would like to make a keybinding to RET in the Evil command buffer (after when you're pressing :). So that he will interpret the [f9]-key as an Enter/confirmation key.

When looking up in the documentation of Evil, I notice there are 6 state maps defined, but none of them applies on the command line, while in Vim you could map the keybindings on the command line.

Any solution on this?

Answer 1

That's pretty interesting. Evil does actually provide evil-ex-map, but it's for entering ex commands that are immediately executed without terminating them with RET. So I've looked a bit at the guts of evil-ex to find out why minibuffer-local-map isn't doing anything useful here:

(minibuffer-with-setup-hook
    #'evil-ex-setup
  (setq result
        (read-from-minibuffer
         ":"
         (or initial-input
             (and evil-ex-previous-command
                  (format "(default: %s) " evil-ex-previous-command)))
         evil-ex-completion-map
         nil
         'evil-ex-history
         evil-ex-previous-command
         t)))

That third argument to read-from-minibuffer is the keymap used instead of minibuffer-local-map for tasks like terminating input. In other words, customize evil-ex-completion-map and you should be good to go:

 (eval-after-load 'evil-vars
   '(define-key evil-ex-completion-map (kbd "<f9>") 'exit-minibuffer))