tjh.dev
1---
2title: User's Guide for Vim in Nixpkgs
3author: Marc Weber
4date: 2016-06-25
5---
6# User's Guide to Vim Plugins/Addons/Bundles/Scripts in Nixpkgs
7
8Both Neovim and Vim can be configured to include your favorite plugins
9and additional libraries.
10
11Loading can be deferred; see examples.
12
13At the moment we support three different methods for managing plugins:
14
15- Vim packages (*recommend*)
16- VAM (=vim-addon-manager)
17- Pathogen
18- vim-plug
19
20## Custom configuration
21
22Adding custom .vimrc lines can be done using the following code:
23
24```
25vim_configurable.customize {
26 # `name` specifies the name of the executable and package
27 name = "vim-with-plugins";
28
29 vimrcConfig.customRC = ''
30 set hidden
31 '';
32}
33```
34
35This configuration is used when vim is invoked with the command specified as name, in this case `vim-with-plugins`.
36
37For Neovim the `configure` argument can be overridden to achieve the same:
38
39```
40neovim.override {
41 configure = {
42 customRC = ''
43 # here your custom configuration goes!
44 '';
45 };
46}
47```
48
49If you want to use `neovim-qt` as a graphical editor, you can configure it by overriding neovim in an overlay
50or passing it an overridden neovimn:
51
52```
53neovim-qt.override {
54 neovim = neovim.override {
55 configure = {
56 customRC = ''
57 # your custom configuration
58 '';
59 };
60 };
61}
62```
63
64## Managing plugins with Vim packages
65
66To store you plugins in Vim packages (the native vim plugin manager, see `:help packages`) the following example can be used:
67
68```
69vim_configurable.customize {
70 vimrcConfig.packages.myVimPackage = with pkgs.vimPlugins; {
71 # loaded on launch
72 start = [ youcompleteme fugitive ];
73 # manually loadable by calling `:packadd $plugin-name`
74 # however, if a vim plugin has a dependency that is not explicitly listed in
75 # opt that dependency will always be added to start to avoid confusion.
76 opt = [ phpCompletion elm-vim ];
77 # To automatically load a plugin when opening a filetype, add vimrc lines like:
78 # autocmd FileType php :packadd phpCompletion
79 };
80}
81```
82
83`myVimPackage` is an arbitrary name for the generated package. You can choose any name you like.
84For Neovim the syntax is:
85
86```
87neovim.override {
88 configure = {
89 customRC = ''
90 # here your custom configuration goes!
91 '';
92 packages.myVimPackage = with pkgs.vimPlugins; {
93 # see examples below how to use custom packages
94 start = [ ];
95 # If a vim plugin has a dependency that is not explicitly listed in
96 # opt that dependency will always be added to start to avoid confusion.
97 opt = [ ];
98 };
99 };
100}
101```
102
103The resulting package can be added to `packageOverrides` in `~/.nixpkgs/config.nix` to make it installable:
104
105```
106{
107 packageOverrides = pkgs: with pkgs; {
108 myVim = vim_configurable.customize {
109 # `name` specifies the name of the executable and package
110 name = "vim-with-plugins";
111 # add here code from the example section
112 };
113 myNeovim = neovim.override {
114 configure = {
115 # add here code from the example section
116 };
117 };
118 };
119}
120```
121
122After that you can install your special grafted `myVim` or `myNeovim` packages.
123
124## Managing plugins with vim-plug
125
126To use [vim-plug](https://github.com/junegunn/vim-plug) to manage your Vim
127plugins the following example can be used:
128
129```
130vim_configurable.customize {
131 vimrcConfig.packages.myVimPackage = with pkgs.vimPlugins; {
132 # loaded on launch
133 plug.plugins = [ youcompleteme fugitive phpCompletion elm-vim ];
134 };
135}
136```
137
138For Neovim the syntax is:
139
140```
141neovim.override {
142 configure = {
143 customRC = ''
144 # here your custom configuration goes!
145 '';
146 plug.plugins = with pkgs.vimPlugins; [
147 vim-go
148 ];
149 };
150}
151```
152
153## Managing plugins with VAM
154
155### Handling dependencies of Vim plugins
156
157VAM introduced .json files supporting dependencies without versioning
158assuming that "using latest version" is ok most of the time.
159
160### Example
161
162First create a vim-scripts file having one plugin name per line. Example:
163
164 "tlib"
165 {'name': 'vim-addon-sql'}
166 {'filetype_regex': '\%(vim)$', 'names': ['reload', 'vim-dev-plugin']}
167
168Such vim-scripts file can be read by VAM as well like this:
169
170 call vam#Scripts(expand('~/.vim-scripts'), {})
171
172Create a default.nix file:
173
174 { nixpkgs ? import <nixpkgs> {}, compiler ? "ghc7102" }:
175 nixpkgs.vim_configurable.customize { name = "vim"; vimrcConfig.vam.pluginDictionaries = [ "vim-addon-vim2nix" ]; }
176
177Create a generate.vim file:
178
179 ActivateAddons vim-addon-vim2nix
180 let vim_scripts = "vim-scripts"
181 call nix#ExportPluginsForNix({
182 \ 'path_to_nixpkgs': eval('{"'.substitute(substitute(substitute($NIX_PATH, ':', ',', 'g'), '=',':', 'g'), '\([:,]\)', '"\1"',"g").'"}')["nixpkgs"],
183 \ 'cache_file': '/tmp/vim2nix-cache',
184 \ 'try_catch': 0,
185 \ 'plugin_dictionaries': ["vim-addon-manager"]+map(readfile(vim_scripts), 'eval(v:val)')
186 \ })
187
188Then run
189
190 nix-shell -p vimUtils.vim_with_vim2nix --command "vim -c 'source generate.vim'"
191
192You should get a Vim buffer with the nix derivations (output1) and vam.pluginDictionaries (output2).
193You can add your vim to your system's configuration file like this and start it by "vim-my":
194
195 my-vim =
196 let plugins = let inherit (vimUtils) buildVimPluginFrom2Nix; in {
197 copy paste output1 here
198 }; in vim_configurable.customize {
199 name = "vim-my";
200
201 vimrcConfig.vam.knownPlugins = plugins; # optional
202 vimrcConfig.vam.pluginDictionaries = [
203 copy paste output2 here
204 ];
205
206 # Pathogen would be
207 # vimrcConfig.pathogen.knownPlugins = plugins; # plugins
208 # vimrcConfig.pathogen.pluginNames = ["tlib"];
209 };
210
211
212Sample output1:
213
214 "reload" = buildVimPluginFrom2Nix { # created by nix#NixDerivation
215 name = "reload";
216 src = fetchgit {
217 url = "git://github.com/xolox/vim-reload";
218 rev = "0a601a668727f5b675cb1ddc19f6861f3f7ab9e1";
219 sha256 = "0vb832l9yxj919f5hfg6qj6bn9ni57gnjd3bj7zpq7d4iv2s4wdh";
220 };
221 dependencies = ["nim-misc"];
222
223 };
224 [...]
225
226Sample output2:
227
228 [
229 ''vim-addon-manager''
230 ''tlib''
231 { "name" = ''vim-addon-sql''; }
232 { "filetype_regex" = ''\%(vim)$$''; "names" = [ ''reload'' ''vim-dev-plugin'' ]; }
233 ]
234
235
236## Adding new plugins to nixpkgs
237
238In `pkgs/misc/vim-plugins/vim-plugin-names` we store the plugin names
239for all vim plugins we automatically generate plugins for.
240The format of this file `github username/github repository`:
241For example https://github.com/scrooloose/nerdtree becomes `scrooloose/nerdtree`.
242After adding your plugin to this file run the `./update.py` in the same folder.
243This will updated a file called `generated.nix` and make your plugin accessible in the
244`vimPlugins` attribute set (`vimPlugins.nerdtree` in our example).
245If additional steps to the build process of the plugin are required, add an
246override to the `pkgs/misc/vim-plugins/default.nix` in the same directory.
247
248## Important repositories
249
250- [vim-pi](https://bitbucket.org/vimcommunity/vim-pi) is a plugin repository
251 from VAM plugin manager meant to be used by others as well used by
252
253- [vim2nix](http://github.com/MarcWeber/vim-addon-vim2nix) which generates the
254 .nix code
255