My Standalone Vim configuration

TL;DR

To use this configuration, simply clone this repository as your ~/.vim directory (for vim) or ~/.config/nvim directory (for neovim).

The Big Idea

This vim configuration does not require the user to manually 'run' any install script. The vimrc included in this configuration does this for you (by running the init_vim.sh script). If the setup is successful, a marker is set, which prevents re-running this init script, thereby eliminating any overheads during normal use.

During initialization, the script will check whether the necessary prerequisites are present on the system, and installs any that are missing and easy to install.

This configuration has been tested on a fresh install of Arch Linux, Debian, MacOS, and even WSL2 on Windows, and does seem to work.

Getting it running

There are multiple ways you can use this repository (wow!).

1. As your .vim or .config/nvim directory: For vim, simply clone this repository as your (new) ~/.vim directory, ensuring that you don't have an existing ~/.vimrc. For neovim, simply clone into .config/nvim.

2. Sourcing start.vim from your .vimrc and/or .config/nvim/init.vim: A very simple way to do this would be to run script/install.sh, which does this for you.

3. Using vim -u start.vim: If you already have an existing vim setup, and you want to try out this setup, this is a good option. You can even use an alias to make things easier: alias myvim="vim -u $(realpath start.vim)".

4. Sourcing start.vim after starting vim/nvim: You can also just :source start.vim after you start vim.

Configuration overview

This configuration uses vim plug as its plugin manager. It is straightforward to use, and keeps things simple. This configuration should make vim a decent code editor with the following features:

• Good Code Completion: When working with large projects, this is extremely good to have! coc.nvim uses the best parts of vs-code (which has great extensions for code completion), and allows us to have these features in a native vim environment. When used with the coc snippets extension and example snippets, things work out very well.
• An inbuilt terminal: With vim8 / neovim, the inbuilt terminal is wonderful (with a little bit of tweaking, of course).
• A Colourscheme: Nothing wrong with getting vim looking very pretty! The configuration uses gruvbox
• File Finding: This configuration uses the vim plugin of fzf for quick fuzzy file finding.
• Filetree exploration: With a little bit of massaging, vim's netrw file explorer seems to work well.
• Git integration: This configuration uses the vim-fugitive plugin for git integration.
• Tmux Integration: Using vim-tmux-navigator plugin allows for a uniform keybindings for vim and tmux

Highly Extensible

This configuration is meant to be highly extensible.

• You can choose to add 'local/temporary plugins' by adding a Plug .... line to vimrc.d/extraplug.vim (after creating it). This will not pollute your git repository.
• You can create a miniplugs directory to contain small custom plugins. Adding a new custom plugin is as simple as creating a subdirectory of miniplugs, and it will be added to the runtimepath automatically.

Tmux Support

In order to intergrate tmux with the same keybindings, include the following in your tmux configuration:

is_vim="ps -o state= -o comm= -t '#{pane_tty}' \
    | grep -iqE '^[^TXZ ]+ +(\\S+\\/)?g?(view|l?n?vim?x?)(diff)?$'"

bind-key -n C-w if-shell "$is_vim" "send-keys C-w" "switch-client -Tvimtable"
bind-key -Tvimtable 'h' select-pane -L
bind-key -Tvimtable 'j' select-pane -D
bind-key -Tvimtable 'k' select-pane -U
bind-key -Tvimtable 'l' select-pane -R

bind-key -n 'C-h' if-shell "$is_vim" 'send-keys C-h'  'resize-pane -L'
bind-key -n 'C-j' if-shell "$is_vim" 'send-keys C-j'  'resize-pane -D'
bind-key -n 'C-k' if-shell "$is_vim" 'send-keys C-k'  'resize-pane -U'
bind-key -n 'C-l' if-shell "$is_vim" 'send-keys C-l'  'resize-pane -R'

bind-key -Tvimtable 's' split-window -v -c "#{pane_current_path}"
bind-key -Tvimtable 'v' split-window -h -c "#{pane_current_path}"
bind-key -Tvimtable 'C-w' send-keys C-w

Some screenshots

Neovim support

If you are a neovim user, you can still use this configuration as mentioned in the setup!

However, there are areas where neovim has significant differences from vim (such as their built-in terminal support). In such cases, one needs to handle both cases separately if one wishes to achieve similar behaviour. Therefore, please let me know if you are using neovim with this configuration, and there are other such differences that significantly affect your workflow!