Neovim
Neovim is a fork of Vim aiming to improve user experience, plugins, and GUIs.
Installation
:help provider-clipboard
neovim command.It is also possible to install one of many GUIs and other related projects (most of them are in official repositories or in AUR).
Configuration
Nvim's user-specific configuration file is located at $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/nvim/init.vim
, by default ~/.config/nvim/init.vim
. The global configuration file is loaded from $XDG_CONFIG_DIRS/nvim/sysinit.vim
(by default /etc/xdg/nvim/sysinit.vim
) if it exists, or if it does not, from /usr/share/nvim/sysinit.vim
which should not be user-edited. [1] By default, the former global configuration file does not exist. If you create the former file, you may wish to have it source the latter if you still want the functionality it provides, which is allowing pacman-installed vim packages to work with Nvim.
Nvim is compatible with most of Vim's options, however there are options specific to Nvim. For a complete list of Nvim options, see Neovim's help file.
Nvim's data directory is located in ~/.local/share/nvim/
and contains swap for open files, the ShaDa (Shared Data) file, and the site directory for plugins.
Migrating from Vim
If you wish to migrate your existing Vim configuration to Nvim, simply copy your ~/.vimrc
to ~/.config/nvim/init.vim
. If applicable, copy the contents of ~/.vim/autoload/
to ~/.local/share/nvim/site/autoload/
.
Neovim uses $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/nvim
instead of ~/.vim
as its main configuration directory and $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/nvim/init.vim
instead of ~/.vimrc
as its main configuration file.
If you wish to continue using Vim and wish to source your existing Vim configuration in Nvim, see nvim-from-vim or the :help nvim-from-vim
neovim command.
Loading vim addons
If you would like to use plugins, syntax definitions, or other addons that are installed for vim, you can add the default vim runtime path to neovim by adding it to the rtp
. For example, you could run the following within nvim or add it to your neovim config:
set rtp^=/usr/share/vim/vimfiles/
Tips and tricks
Replacing vi and vim with neovim
Setting $VISUAL
and $EDITOR
environment variables should be sufficient in most cases.
Some applications may hardcode vi or vim as default editor, to use neovim in their place, install neovim-symlinksAUR or neovim-drop-inAUR.
Symlinking init.vim to .vimrc
As neovim is mostly compatible with standard vim, you can symlink nvim/init.vim
to your old .vimrc
to keep old configuration options:
$ ln -s ~/.vimrc ~/.config/nvim/init.vim
If you want some lines to be specific to each version, you can use an if
block in your .vimrc
file:
if has('nvim') " Neovim specific commands else " Standard vim specific commands endif
Adding true color support to neovim
The READMEs
of this project explain how to add 24-bits "True Color" support to your syntax highlighting and how to use a color picker to see how it looks in real-time. Comes with the syntax highlighting of the author (if installed) for C++.
Troubleshooting
Cursor is not restored to previous state after exit
If after exiting neovim cursor is still blinking see solution on neovim FAQ.