When I follow github instructions for vim-misc and vim-sessions, after unzipping to /Users/<me>/.vim/misc and /Users/<me>/.vim/vim-session-master, and then restarting macvim, I get
:helptags ~/.vim/doc
E150: Not a directory: ~/.vim/doc
Also tried putting the two folders in /Users/<me>/ (where my .vimrc is) and in the two locations pointer by $VIM and $VIMRUNTIME from within macvim (/Applications/MacVim.app/Contents/Resources/vim) all to no avail.
I guess I really don't understand how running the :helptags <whatever> starts up/completes installation of these plug-ins anyway?
Before using using a plugin managers, plugins used to go directly into ~/.vim, not into ~/.vim/pluginname. That's when we ran :helptags ~/.vim/doc.
Then we had plugin manager, each with different specific way of doing things. Some even take care of registering the documentation of the plugins installed.
IMO, you'd better find a plugin manager suited to your need and use it. I remember a Q/A on vi.SE, you could start by reading it.
If you prefer to install plugins manually instead of using one of plugin managers like vim-plug or others then you should add plugin directory to your runtimepath. Place this line to your .vimrc set runtimepath+=/path/to/plugin. I would not recommend to place plugins directly to ~/.vim directory, use sub-folder instead (e.g. /Users/<you>/.vim/plugins).
Related
I'm trying to get this installed in my vim for ubuntu:
https://github.com/nelsyeung/twig.vim
I downloaded the files to ~/.vim folder, but there are no instructions on what I need to put into the .vimrc file to get it activated. What steps am I missing?
I downloaded the files to ~/.vim folder,
No. If you want to use Vim new integrated plugins management, first create the pack directory with a dedicated subdirectory of your choice (let's call it git-plugins but it's really own to you and depend how you want to have things organised)
mkdir -p ~/.vim/pack/git-plugins
In that location, create one of these directories:
start for plugins you always want available when you launch Vim
opt for plugins you want to activate and deactivate manually
Last, there will be a directory for the plugin itself. So, here, you have to download the files into let's say ~/.vim/pack/git-plugins/start/twig/
instructions on what I need […] to get it activated.
Now, launch vim and type the following command:
:packloadall
Check the included manual with
:h packl
This plugin has no doc to integrate into that system. But for general cases, put the following in your ~/.vimrc, after all internal setting and before plugins dedicated settings.
packloadall
silent! helptags ALL
I unziped the vim-fuzzyfinder and vim-l9 packages in my ~/.vimrc directory
[shetye#dev03 ~/.vim/vim-fuzzyfinder]$ls
autoload doc plugin
[shetye#dev03 ~/.vim]$cd vim-l9/
[shetye#dev03 ~/.vim/vim-l9]$ls
autoload doc plugin
Also i tried copying the same in my home directory. vim however does not detect this plugin.
:fuf-usage
E492: Not an editor command fuf-usage
:FufBuffer
E492: Not an editor command FufBuffer
I tried adding the directory ~/.vim/vim-fuzzyfinder, ~/.vim/vim-l9 to the $PATH env variable. That did not help either.
Any ideas on how to get fuzzyfinder going ?
You should install it correctly to make it work. This is the file structure you should have:
~/
+-.vim/
+-autoload/
+-doc/
+-plugin/
Once you get to that point, you are supposed to type this command in Vim:
:helptags ~/.vim/doc
The .vim directory structure that you have created is a mix between traditional Vim (where all plugins are mixed together into single .vim/autoload/, .vim/plugin/, etc. directories) and the separation (into .vim/bundle/<pluginname>/autoload/) created by package managers like Pathogen or Vundle.
Either stick to the original layout (even though there are many proponents for the new package structure, the old one works just fine; it's just not as easy to uninstall a plugin), or install one of the mentioned package managers and adhere to their prescribed layout.
After installing many plugins in my ~/.vim folder, I feel I no more understand the contents of that folder and I don't feel enough confidence about deleting the plugin from ~/.vim/plugin to uninstall a plugin. What if there are related files in other directories? What if the documentation was already registered (:helptags), yet the plugin will be removed? Is there any procedure to uninstall vim-plugins? I don't really want my Vim to end up being as messy as my Windows.
If you want to uninstall a plugin which was installed into ~/.vim manually, you should redownload its archive, list its content and manually remove everything, then run :helptags again (this will remove missing tags). If plugin was installed from a vimball, see documentation for :RmVimball. Vimball archives normally have .vba or .vba.gz extensions. In case you don't remember vimball file name, it is contained into ~/.vim/.VimballRecord file.
In order to avoid this problem in the future, try vim-addon-manager plugin. Like pathogen, it puts each plugin into separate directory, but is also capable of downloading, installing and updating them.
To manage easily plugins in vim use pathogen
and this awesome article --> come home to vim
If you install vim plugin via Vundle, it's easy to uninstall plugin, comment out the plugin in .vimrc, example:
"Bundle 'tmhedberg/SimpylFold'
then
:BundleClean
common commands of Vundle:
:BundleList -List all plugins
:BundleInstall -Install all plugins
:BundleInstall! -Update all plugins
:BundleSearch foo -Find foo plugin
:BundleSearch! foo -refresh buffer for foo plugin
:BundleClean -clean all plugins if the plugin not defined in .vimrc
You can simply run:
vim +PlugClean
OR open vim and run :PlugClean.
On running this command, it will ask you to remove the plugin directories. answer with y and it will clean the plugs.
Interestingly, even the much downloaded Pathogen.vim documentation boldly suggests (their emphasis, not mine):
For new users, I recommend using Vim's built-in package management instead. :help packages
Ok, I can take a hint, that pathogen is not for most of us new users.
So then looking into native vim packages, and what it has to offer...
The skinny from :help packages seems to be this:
... A package can be downloaded as an archive and unpacked in its own directory.
Thus the files are not mixed with files of other plugins.
That makes it easy to update and remove.
Can someone give me a detailed instalation procedure for gVim Portable and important C++ and python development plugins ... like OmniCppComplete, NERDTree, supertab etc ...
or better yet, a prebuilt version
thx
Using plugins on portable vim will require slightly different steps than the regular install. From the configuration page, your .vim file should probably be in Data/settings/.vim instead of ~/.vim
Follow the plugin install instructions and substitute ~/.vim with ((where you put PortableGvim))/Data/settings/.vim
If a plugin does an automatic install, then you may need to move files from ~/.vim
You may find it easier to grab someone else's vimfiles. Mine are on github.
As for the plugins themselves, I got started with this post. See also this SO question.
For what it's worth, if you can live with there being possible issues if you use a computer with vim installed and vimfiles present in the $HOME directory, you can simply take your vim72 directory, your vimfiles directory and your _vimrc (and _gvimrc if you have one) and put them in e:\vim (assuming E: is where the USB stick is mounted). You can then just run e:\vim\vim72\gvim.exe and it will load the configuration from e:\vim\_vimrc and e:\vim\vimfiles. If you plug it into a computer that mounts it as F:, then just run f:\vim\vim72\gvim.exe obviously.
Importantly, this does not require messing about with PortableGvim (which I've never really seen the point of since gvim is essentially portable anyway if you ignore the possible $HOME issues) and allows you to easily synchronise all of your settings between your desktop vim installation and your portable one.
On top of this, I also put vimrc in c:\vim\vimfiles and have _vimrc in c:\vim with the following contents:
runtime vimrc
and then put the whole of c:\vim\vimfiles under version control. This makes it very easy to keep the copy on the USB stick and the copy on the Windows PC (and the copy on my home Linux PC and... and...) synchronised.
I am learning VIM. The VIM folder in the windows has two subdirectories VIM72 and VIMFILE. What is the difference between them? Where should I install my plugins?
Usually VIM72 (depends on the vim version) is the 'runtime' directory, I believe this is where vim is searching for all the stuff that it needs during 'runtime'. You would install your custom stuff, e.g. plugins, in your '$HOME/.vim' directory on linux (plugins in $HOME/.vim/plugin).
On windows it seems to be the vimfiles directory (you asked about VIMFILE on my windows system and vim71 it is vimfiles).
So I would try to store plugin in vimfiles\plugin directory on your system.
The difference would be that in VIM72 you would have all the runtime stuff that comes prepackaged with vim including binaries. You can install your own stuff in your vimfiles directory which will be usually searched first for stuff like syntax highlight, color schemes, plugins, documentation and so on.
You can find out the location of your vim72 directory, the location for your custom stuff like vim72/plugins, vim72/colors for colorshemes and so on, from vim do:
:echo $VIMRUNTIME
And finally, vim72 is used by vim 7.2 so when the version changes it will use different directory like vim73 and so on.
Expanding very slightly on stefan's answer:
Like he says, ~/.vim for linux-related systems, and usually vimfiles for gvim on Windows - this is your home vim directory.
You should put all of your own plugins into vimfiles to make sure that when you upgrade your vim installation you don't lose any of the custom plugins or modifications.
For example
There is a syntax file called cpp.vim in vim72/syntax.
If you now want to change a few things in this syntax file (say to add an extra keyword) you could have a copy of this syntax file in vimfiles/syntax with the additional keyword syntax rules.
Now when you upgrade vim to 7.3, you still have all of your custom plugins and settings.
If you were to instead change vim72/syntax/cpp.vim, when you next upgraded vim these files would be overwritten by the new versions and any changes that you made would be lost.
Plus, since vim72/syntax/ contains all of the original syntax files, it would be more difficult to tell which of these you had customised.
That 'vimfiles' directory is where you can install things system-wide without touching Vim's installation directory ('vim72'). The directory 'vim72' is subject to change when upgrading and a new major or minor version will use a different directory (e.g. Vim 7.1 used 'vim71' and Vim 8.0 will use 'vim80').