Vim plug install windows

Vim Plug is a popular plugin manager for Vim, simplifying the process of installing, managing, and updating plugins within Vim.

Plugins in Vim are used to add new features, enhance existing functionality, and customize the editor to suit specific needs and workflows. Vim Plug provides an efficient and straightforward way to handle plugins, making it easier for users to discover, install, and maintain plugins without compromising Vim’s performance or introducing unnecessary complexity.

In this blog post, I will discuss how to install Vim Plug and how to manage plugins using the Vim Plug plugin manager.

Installation of Vim Plug

Installing Vim Plug is a straightforward process. You just need to execute a simple command on your terminal.

macOS and Linux

To install Vim Plug on macOS and Linux, open your terminal and enter the following command:

curl -fLo ~/.vim/autoload/plug.vim --create-dirs \
    https://raw.githubusercontent.com/junegunn/vim-plug/master/plug.vim

After installing Vim Plug, restart Vim, or enter the following command to apply the changes:

:source $MYVIMRC

Windows

For windows users to install vim-plugin for using vim in powershell, first open powershell and enter the following command

iwr -useb https://raw.githubusercontent.com/junegunn/vim-plug/master/plug.vim | `
    ni $HOME/vimfiles/autoload/plug.vim -Force

After installing Vim Plug, restart Vim, or enter the following command to apply the changes:

:source $MYVIMRC

Verifying the Installation

To verify that Vim Plug has been installed correctly, open Vim and run the command:

:PlugStatus

If Vim Plug is functioning correctly, it will display a list of plugins (which should be empty at this point) in the Vim Plug window.

Adding Plugins using Vim-Plug

Once you have Vim Plug installed, you can start adding plugins to enhance Vim’s functionality.

Updating Your Vim Configuration

To add a plugin using Vim Plug, open your Vim configuration file. The file is typically located at ~/.vimrc. If the file doesn’t exist, Vim will create one for you. Enter the following command to open your Vim configuration file:

vim ~/.vimrc

Add the following line to initialize Vim Plug:

call plug#begin('~/.vim/plugged')

"" Install your plugin here

call plug#end()

This line sets the directory where Vim Plug will manage your plugins. By default, plugins will be installed in the ~/.vim/plugged directory.

Here is a sample .vimrc file with some useful settings and plugins that you can copy and paste into your ~/.vimrc configuration:

"""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""
"                   Plugins area                        "
"                                                       "
"""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""

call plug#begin('~/.vim/plugged')

""""""" Vim appearance """""""

Plug 'vim-airline/vim-airline'
Plug 'vim-airline/vim-airline-themes'

""""""" Search """""""

Plug 'junegunn/fzf', { 'dir': '~/.fzf', 'do': './install --all' } " File fuzzy search
Plug 'junegunn/fzf.vim'
Plug 'mhinz/vim-grepper' " AMAZING plugin for searching text inside project

call plug#end()

"""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""
"                   Settings area                       "
"                                                       "
"""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""
syntax on               " enable syntax highlighting
set background=dark
set termguicolors       " to enable true colors
set t_Co=256            " needed to work in Ubuntu terminal
set nocompatible        " make Vim behave in a more useful way
set mouse=a             " enable mouse in all modes (normal, visual, etc)
set nu                  " line number

Installing Plugins

To install a plugin with Vim Plug, you need to locate the plugin. You can directly install Vim plugins hosted on GitHub repositories using the username and repo name in the following manner:

Plug 'username/plugin-name'

For example, if you want to install the popular airline status line plugin in Vim, you should use the following command within your Vim plugin configuration:

call plug#begin('~/.vim/plugged')

"" Install your plugin here
Plug 'vim-airline/vim-airline'

call plug#end()

Then save the file and restart Vim or run the command :source $MYVIMRC within Vim to reload the configuration file. Run the command :PlugInstall within Vim. This command will download and install the specified plugins.

:PlugInstall

Vim Plug will display the progress of the installation in the Vim Plug window. Once the installation is complete, the plugins will be available for use.

Updating Plugins

It is recommended to periodically update your plugins to benefit from new features. Vim Plug provides a feature to sync and update installed plugins. To update a plugin, open your .vimrc file and enter the following command:

:PlugUpdateVim

Plug will fetch updates for each plugin and install them, if available. The progress will be displayed in the Vim Plug window.

Removing Plugins

If you have unused plugins, it’s a good idea to remove them from Vim. This will help Vim load faster. You can remove any plugin you have installed with Vim Plug. To remove a plugin, open your .vimrc file:

vim ~/.vimrc

Then remove the corresponding entry that you used to install the plugin in the first place. After removing the plugin entry, restart Vim or use the :source $MYVIMRC command within Vim to reload the configuration file. Then enter the following command:

:PlugClean

Vim Plug will remove any plugins that are no longer needed, freeing up space and keeping your Vim environment clean.

Listing the Installed Plugins

If you are curious about which plugins are used in your Vim editor, you can quickly check the installed plugins with Vim Plug. To see the list of installed plugins, open Vim and enter the following command:

:PlugStatus

Vim Plug will display the status of each plugin, indicating whether it is installed or not.

Conclusion

In this blog post, we explored the powerful plugin manager Vim Plug and learned how to install, use, and customize plugins in Vim. Vim Plug simplifies the process of extending Vim’s functionality, allowing you to enhance your editing experience and boost productivity.

Getting started with vim can be feeling hard if all you’ve seen of vim is a scary old terminal editor. But fear not! When setting up your vim for success with the right plugins and color theme it will become your new best friend.

A quick note I use neovim as my «vim» editor and therefore I will show you the workflow with neovim in this article.

What is VIM?

«Vim is a highly configurable text editor built to make creating and changing any kind of text very efficient. It is included as «vi» with most UNIX systems and with Apple OS X.» taken from vim.org.

Now okay, that sounds awesome but why is it very efficient? Vim can be very efficient because of its smallness and simplicity, therefore it does not consume a significant amount of system resources as opposed to other editors.

What is Neovim?

Neovim is a continuation and extension of Vim. Neovim comes with the good parts of vim and more. Neovim has some architectural changes that bring more stability, performance and make the code more maintainable.

Installing Neovim

Neovim got a great wiki section regarding installing it that you can find here

How to install and use vim-plug for neovim.

The plugin manager I use for vim is vim-plug and therefore I will show you how to install that. There are more plugin managers you could use if you want to and feel free to find the one that suits your needs best.

Installing vim-plug for macOS/Linux

Run the following command inside your terminal.

sh -c 'curl -fLo "${XDG_DATA_HOME:-$HOME/.local/share}"/nvim/site/autoload/plug.vim --create-dirs \
 https://raw.githubusercontent.com/junegunn/vim-plug/master/plug.vim'

Installing vim-plug for Windows

Run the following command inside PowerShell.

iwr -useb https://raw.githubusercontent.com/junegunn/vim-plug/master/plug.vim |`
    ni "$(@($env:XDG_DATA_HOME, $env:LOCALAPPDATA)[$null -eq $env:XDG_DATA_HOME])/nvim-data/site/autoload/plug.vim" -Force

How to use vim-plug

If you want to learn more on how to use vim-plug you can check out their tutorial

The basics of using vim-plug are:

1. Begin the section with call plug#begin()
2. List the plugins with Plug commands
3. call plug#end() to update &runtimepath and initialize plugin system
   • Automatically executes filetype plugin indent on and syntax enable. You can revert the settings after the call. e.g. filetype indent off, syntax off, etc.
4. Reload ~/config/nvim/init.vim and :PlugInstall to install plugins.

You can reload your init.vim while still editing it by running :so %

Selecting a color theme for neovim.

Now that we got vim-plug installed we can get some colors 🎨

I will show you how to install gruvbox but here you can research and find a color scheme that suits you the best. Installing will be the same for most color schemes.

Inside the vim config add Plug 'morhetz/gruvbox' reload your config and run :PlugInstall

After that, you need to add the following to your vim config. Beware that this does not have to be inside your plug section.

syntax enable
colors gruvbox

An example of how it could look inside your config 👇

call plug#begin()
Plug 'morhetz/gruvbox'
call plug#end()

syntax enable
colors gruvbox

Plugins to improve your developer experience

Some plugins I use daily to improve my developer experience is the following:

Plug 'nvim-telescope/telescope.nvim'
Plug 'scrooloose/nerdtree'
Plug 'itchyny/lightline.vim'

Telescope
Telescope is a highly extendable fuzzy finder over lists.

The following let’s you use telescope with the bindings of leader key then ff, fg, fb, fh.

nnoremap <leader>ff <cmd>Telescope find_files<cr>
nnoremap <leader>fg <cmd>Telescope live_grep<cr>
nnoremap <leader>fb <cmd>Telescope buffers<cr>
nnoremap <leader>fh <cmd>Telescope help_tags<cr>

Nerdtree
Nerdtree is a file system explorer.

To toggle Nerdtree add the follwing to your config:
nnoremap <C-Space> :NERDTreeToggle<CR>
This lets your toggle nerdtree with CTRL + Space

Lightline
Lightline is a light and configurable statusline/tabline plugin for Vim

An example of lightline:

Картинка с сайта: dev.to

Plugins for web development

When working with web development it’s nice to have the correct syntax highlighting, autocompletion and linting. I will now show the plugins I use when working with web development(Typescript, Next.js, React, etc.).

Plug 'neoclide/coc.nvim', {'branch': 'release'}

Plug 'maxmellon/vim-jsx-pretty'
Plug 'pangloss/vim-javascript'
Plug 'leafgarland/typescript-vim'
Plug 'peitalin/vim-jsx-typescript'

Plug 'styled-components/vim-styled-components', { 'branch': 'main' }
Plug 'jparise/vim-graphql'

The first plugin I use is coc. Coc is a intellisense engine for VIM. Now the rest plugins I use are providing me with the correct syntax highlighting and autocompletion.

Improving the power of coc

Some extra small tips I have inside my config for coc is the following:

let g:coc_global_extensions = [
  \ 'coc-tsserver'
  \ ]

if isdirectory('./node_modules') && isdirectory('./node_modules/prettier')
  let g:coc_global_extensions += ['coc-prettier']
endif

if isdirectory('./node_modules') && isdirectory('./node_modules/eslint')
  let g:coc_global_extensions += ['coc-eslint']
endif

These make sure that coc with typescript is up to date and installed. Also, since I often use eslint and prettier in my projects I have configured coc to install the relevant coc extension for them if they’re being used.

Thank you for reading this blog post! You can find more posts like this on my website: pluppen.com

And at last, don’t forget to share your VIM config with me and show off your awesome vim environment.

package
script version
date
Vim version
user
release notes

plug.vim
0.8.0
2015-12-24
7.0
Junegunn Choi
New features:

  — Added `commit` option for fine-grained version control

  — Fixed issues with parallel installer on Windows and enabled it by default

Improvements:

  — Changed `PlugSnapshot` to create Vim script using the new commit hash support

  — `PlugDiff` shows pending updates for plugins locked on `commit` or `tag`

  — Enhanced output format of post-update hooks

Issues resolved:

  — Fixed Ruby installer to unshallowed tagged plugin on update (#350)

  — Fixed output format of Neovim installer (#340)

  — Remapped `q` in plug window to `bd` (#336)

  — Fixed freeze in Python installer (#318)

  — Case-sensitive validation of `on` arguments (#314)

  — Fixed post-update hook not to run on error

  — Fixed `for` option to load syntax files (#272)

  — Fixed UnicodeDecodeError from Python installer (#262)

  — `set nomodifiable` on commit preview window (#255)

plug.vim
0.7.2
2015-05-30
7.0
Junegunn Choi
— Parallel installer for Python 2.6+ and 3.0+

— Added support for Neovim Python

— Shallow clone by default

— PlugUpgrade using git

— Trigger User autocmd when plugin is loaded on-demand

— Do not add `git::@` to URI if git 2.3.0 or above is found

— Bug fixes and improvements

plug.vim
0.6.2
2014-12-12
7.0
Junegunn Choi
— Fixed issues with NeoVim (#118, #127)

— Fixed to remove any existing ODL triggers (#130, #132)

— Fixed to check for full match of command name when setting ODL triggers (#135)

— Minor improvements and fixes (#123, #131, #135)

plug.vim
0.6.1
2014-10-27
7.0
Junegunn Choi
0.6.1:

— Fixed PlugUpgrade on Neovim (#111)

— Changed not to suppress messages from ftplugin when loaded on-demand (#112)

— PlugInstall or PlugUpdate will now install frozen plugins as well (#113)

— Fixed not to yield empty path elements in &rtp (#114)

0.6.0:

— Asynchronous parallel installer for Neovim

— Added PlugSnapshot command

— Fixed PlugClean not to remove unmanaged plugins inside g:plug_home

plug.vim
0.5.7
2014-09-25
7.0
Junegunn Choi
Minor bug fixes and improvements

— Resolve symlinks in path to plug.vim (#67)

— `syntax enable` instead of `syntax on`

— Refactor PlugUpgrade (#72)

— Remove plugin directory on failure during installation (#75)

— Add `U` keybinding for updating plugins (#79)

— Use blackhole register when deleting lines

— Expand argument to plug#begin (#82)

— Suppress error messages from `which` command

— Improve &runtimepath mgmt (#85, #88)

— Enable syntax only during startup

plug.vim
0.5.6
2014-09-04
7.0
Junegunn Choi
— Added `g:plug_window` (#57)

— Changed URL for `PlugUpgrade` (#58)

— Added `g:plug_url_format` (#62)

— Fixed PlugDiff with git config `pull.rebase=true` (#64)

— Fixed commit review of `PlugDiff` when directory changed on BufEnter/BufLeave (#65)

— Changed not to print message after PlugUpdate when there was no update (#66)

plug.vim
0.5.5
2014-08-16
7.0
Junegunn Choi
0.5.2:

— Added `PlugInstall!` and `PlugUpdate!` for forced-run of post-update hooks

0.5.3:

— Added `-bar` option to the commands so that they can be written one line

  with BARs. e.g. `PlugClean! | PlugInstall`

— Fixed `PlugUpgrade` so that a restart (or reload of .vimrc) is not required

  even when a very old version of vim-plug is upgraded

— Removed redundant code for creating of `g:plug_home` directory

0.5.4:

— Added plug#helptags()

— Added plug#load(name…)

— Updated `:PlugStatus` to show which plugins are not yet loaded

    — You load them with `L` key (visual range allowed)

— Updated `:PlugDiff` to allow reverting the update with `X` key

0.5.5:

— Use `git::` prefix to avoid password prompt on git 1.7 (#56)

— Allow Plug command even when git executable is not found (#52)

plug.vim
0.5.1
2014-07-31
7.0
Junegunn Choi
— Bug fixes and performance optimization.

— Removed support for Plugfile

plug.vim
0.4.0
2014-07-23
7.0
Junegunn Choi
— Added support for locally-managed plugins

    — Plug expression should start with either `/`, `~`, or `$`

— Added `frozen` option for not updating/installing unless explicitly specifed

— Errors during help tag generation will be ignored

— Automatic retrial on timeout

— Added `R` keybinding for retrying failed update/installation

— Workaround for screen freeze problem on GUI MacVim

plug.vim
0.3.5
2014-07-09
7.0
Junegunn Choi
— Implemented <Plug>-based on-demand loading

— Fixed `after` directory and `Plugfile` on Windows

— Removed extraneous FileType events on filetype-based on-demand loading

plug.vim
0.3.4
2014-06-24
7.0
Junegunn Choi
Bug fixes and improvements

plug.vim
0.3.3
2014-06-22
7.0
Junegunn Choi
Bug fix in FT-based ODL

plug.vim
0.3.2
2014-06-21
7.0
Junegunn Choi
0.3.2

— Clear #filetypeplugin for filetype-based ODL (#24)

— Allow updating subset of plugins

— Allow -range in on-demand loading commands

— Allow trailing comment after Plug declaration (#23)

plug.vim
0.3.1
2014-06-17
7.0
Junegunn Choi
— Initialize git submodule

— Filetype-based on-demand loading

plug.vim
0.3.0
2014-04-23
7.0
Junegunn Choi
Bug fixes and improvements

plug.vim
0.2.0
2014-02-12
7.0
Junegunn Choi
Added support for on-demand loading of plugins

plug.vim
0.1.0
2014-01-12
7.3
Junegunn Choi
Initial upload