Dedicated window for dired mode in Emacs?

Question

I have emacs behaving more or less how I want it to by using this common bit of elisp:

(defun toggle-current-window-dedication ()
 (interactive)
 (let* ((window    (selected-window))
        (dedicated (window-dedicated-p window)))
   (set-window-dedicated-p window (not dedicated))
   (message "Window %sdedicated to %s"
            (if dedicated "no longer " "")
            (buffer-name))))

(global-set-key [pause] 'toggle-current-window-dedication)

Unfortunately, dired uses the directory for the buffer name, so dedicating a dired window only dedicates it to that directory. Once you navigate up or down, it opens a new buffer in a separate window. What I would like to do is dedicate a window to a major mode (dired in this case), and have all new buffers that default to that mode prefer that window. Is this possible?

Answer 1

Try using your code in combination with dired-single, which will cause all dired navigation to happen within a single buffer named *dired*. In the interests of full disclosure, I wrote dired-single.

Answer 2

set-window-dedicated-p forces Emacs to only show that window for that buffer, the other dired buffers cannot use the same window. See the *info* page for set-window-dedicated-p:

`display-buffer' (*note Choosing Window::) never uses a dedicated window for displaying another buffer in it.

Perhaps one of the packages on the wiki page for DiredReuseDirectoryBuffer provides the functionality you're looking for...