How to change granularity level of undo in emacs evil-mode with undo-tree?

Question

These are some awesome options: emacs-24, evil-mode (using vim bindings in emacs), and undo-tree.

However, when I'm in edit mode (insert mode), I sometimes jump around for a number inserts, deletes, etc. before hitting escape and leaving insert mode.

"Undo" takes the whole insert (including deletes) as one edit. For example, I can't undo the paragraph I accidentally deleted without undo'ing the whole delete!

Is there any way to fix this?

Here are some related links:

• How Emacs determines a unit of work to undo
• http://vim.wikia.com/wiki/Using_undo_branches
• http://vim.wikia.com/wiki/Modified_undo_behavior
• This tip probably has best explanation from the vim side.

Here are the vim mappings that convert certain vim commands so that they can be undone:

inoremap <c-u> <c-g>u<c-u>
inoremap <c-w> <c-g>u<c-w>
inoremap <End> <C-g>u<End>
inoremap <BS> <c-g>u<BS>
inoremap <CR> <c-g>u<CR>
inoremap <del> <c-g>u<del>

What is needed is for the undo mode inside of emacs evil undo-tree to track additional events besides just leaving insert mode. For example, you should be able to stay in insert mode a long time and then undo any sort of delete, cut, paste.

Answer 1

Try evil-want-fine-undo:

Whether actions are undone in several steps. There are two possible choices: nil ("no") means that all changes made during insert state, including a possible delete after a change operation, are collected in a single undo step. Non-nil ("yes") means that undo steps are determined according to Emacs heuristics, and no attempt is made to aggregate changes.

(setq evil-want-fine-undo t)

Answer 2

Is this specific to undo tree? I don't use it, so the following might not apply...

I'm not sure if you can modify the amount of editing that the undo mechanism considers to be a single unit, but what you can do is:

Select a region first and then type the undo key, and Emacs will only undo changes that were made in that region.

That can be very useful.