nixpkgs/doc/languages-frameworks/vim.section.md

title	author	date
User's Guide for Vim in Nixpkgs	Marc Weber	2016-06-25

User's Guide to Vim Plugins/Addons/Bundles/Scripts in Nixpkgs

Both Neovim and Vim can be configured to include your favorite plugins and additional libraries.

Loading can be deferred; see examples.

At the moment we support three different methods for managing plugins:

• Vim packages (recommend)
• VAM (=vim-addon-manager)
• Pathogen
• vim-plug

Custom configuration

Adding custom .vimrc lines can be done using the following code:

vim_configurable.customize {
  # `name` specifies the name of the executable and package
  name = "vim-with-plugins";

  vimrcConfig.customRC = ''
    set hidden
  '';
}

This configuration is used when Vim is invoked with the command specified as name, in this case vim-with-plugins.

For Neovim the configure argument can be overridden to achieve the same:

neovim.override {
  configure = {
    customRC = ''
      # here your custom configuration goes!
    '';
  };
}

If you want to use neovim-qt as a graphical editor, you can configure it by overriding Neovim in an overlay or passing it an overridden Neovimn:

neovim-qt.override {
  neovim = neovim.override {
    configure = {
      customRC = ''
        # your custom configuration
      '';
    };
  };
}

Managing plugins with Vim packages

To store you plugins in Vim packages (the native Vim plugin manager, see :help packages) the following example can be used:

vim_configurable.customize {
  vimrcConfig.packages.myVimPackage = with pkgs.vimPlugins; {
    # loaded on launch
    start = [ youcompleteme fugitive ];
    # manually loadable by calling `:packadd $plugin-name`
    # however, if a Vim plugin has a dependency that is not explicitly listed in
    # opt that dependency will always be added to start to avoid confusion.
    opt = [ phpCompletion elm-vim ];
    # To automatically load a plugin when opening a filetype, add vimrc lines like:
    # autocmd FileType php :packadd phpCompletion
  };
}

myVimPackage is an arbitrary name for the generated package. You can choose any name you like. For Neovim the syntax is:

neovim.override {
  configure = {
    customRC = ''
      # here your custom configuration goes!
    '';
    packages.myVimPackage = with pkgs.vimPlugins; {
      # see examples below how to use custom packages
      start = [ ];
      # If a Vim plugin has a dependency that is not explicitly listed in
      # opt that dependency will always be added to start to avoid confusion.
      opt = [ ];
    };
  };
}

The resulting package can be added to packageOverrides in ~/.nixpkgs/config.nix to make it installable:

{
  packageOverrides = pkgs: with pkgs; {
    myVim = vim_configurable.customize {
      # `name` specifies the name of the executable and package
      name = "vim-with-plugins";
      # add here code from the example section
    };
    myNeovim = neovim.override {
      configure = {
      # add here code from the example section
      };
    };
  };
}

After that you can install your special grafted myVim or myNeovim packages.

Managing plugins with vim-plug

To use vim-plug to manage your Vim plugins the following example can be used:

vim_configurable.customize {
  vimrcConfig.packages.myVimPackage = with pkgs.vimPlugins; {
    # loaded on launch
    plug.plugins = [ youcompleteme fugitive phpCompletion elm-vim ];
  };
}

For Neovim the syntax is:

neovim.override {
  configure = {
    customRC = ''
      # here your custom configuration goes!
    '';
    plug.plugins = with pkgs.vimPlugins; [
      vim-go
    ];
  };
}

Managing plugins with VAM

Handling dependencies of Vim plugins

VAM introduced .json files supporting dependencies without versioning assuming that "using latest version" is ok most of the time.

Example

First create a vim-scripts file having one plugin name per line. Example:

"tlib"
{'name': 'vim-addon-sql'}
{'filetype_regex': '\%(vim)$', 'names': ['reload', 'vim-dev-plugin']}

Such vim-scripts file can be read by VAM as well like this:

call vam#Scripts(expand('~/.vim-scripts'), {})

Create a default.nix file:

{ nixpkgs ? import <nixpkgs> {}, compiler ? "ghc7102" }:
nixpkgs.vim_configurable.customize { name = "vim"; vimrcConfig.vam.pluginDictionaries = [ "vim-addon-vim2nix" ]; }

Create a generate.vim file:

ActivateAddons vim-addon-vim2nix
let vim_scripts = "vim-scripts"
call nix#ExportPluginsForNix({
\  'path_to_nixpkgs': eval('{"'.substitute(substitute(substitute($NIX_PATH, ':', ',', 'g'), '=',':', 'g'), '\([:,]\)', '"\1"',"g").'"}')["nixpkgs"],
\  'cache_file': '/tmp/vim2nix-cache',
\  'try_catch': 0,
\  'plugin_dictionaries': ["vim-addon-manager"]+map(readfile(vim_scripts), 'eval(v:val)')
\ })

Then run

nix-shell -p vimUtils.vim_with_vim2nix --command "vim -c 'source generate.vim'"

You should get a Vim buffer with the nix derivations (output1) and vam.pluginDictionaries (output2). You can add your Vim to your system's configuration file like this and start it by "vim-my":

my-vim =
  let plugins = let inherit (vimUtils) buildVimPluginFrom2Nix; in {
    copy paste output1 here
  }; in vim_configurable.customize {
    name = "vim-my";

    vimrcConfig.vam.knownPlugins = plugins; # optional
    vimrcConfig.vam.pluginDictionaries = [
       copy paste output2 here
    ];

    # Pathogen would be
    # vimrcConfig.pathogen.knownPlugins = plugins; # plugins
    # vimrcConfig.pathogen.pluginNames = ["tlib"];
  };

Sample output1:

"reload" = buildVimPluginFrom2Nix { # created by nix#NixDerivation
  name = "reload";
  src = fetchgit {
    url = "git://github.com/xolox/vim-reload";
    rev = "0a601a668727f5b675cb1ddc19f6861f3f7ab9e1";
    sha256 = "0vb832l9yxj919f5hfg6qj6bn9ni57gnjd3bj7zpq7d4iv2s4wdh";
  };
  dependencies = ["nim-misc"];

};
[...]

Sample output2:

[
  ''vim-addon-manager''
  ''tlib''
  { "name" = ''vim-addon-sql''; }
  { "filetype_regex" = ''\%(vim)$$''; "names" = [ ''reload'' ''vim-dev-plugin'' ]; }
]

Adding new plugins to nixpkgs

Nix expressions for Vim plugins are stored in pkgs/misc/vim-plugins. For the vast majority of plugins, Nix expressions are automatically generated by running ./update.py. This creates a generated.nix file based on the plugins listed in vim-plugin-names. Plugins are listed in alphabetical order in vim-plugin-names using the format [github username]/[repository]. For example https://github.com/scrooloose/nerdtree becomes scrooloose/nerdtree.

Some plugins require overrides in order to function properly. Overrides are placed in overrides.nix. Overrides are most often required when a plugin requires some dependencies, or extra steps are required during the build process. For example deoplete-fish requires both deoplete-nvim and vim-fish, and so the following override was added:

deoplete-fish = super.deoplete-fish.overrideAttrs(old: {
  dependencies = with super; [ deoplete-nvim vim-fish ];
});

Sometimes plugins require an override that must be changed when the plugin is updated. This can cause issues when Vim plugins are auto-updated but the associated override isn't updated. For these plugins, the override should be written so that it specifies all information required to install the plugin, and running ./update.py doesn't change the derivation for the plugin. Manually updating the override is required to update these types of plugins. An example of such a plugin is LanguageClient-neovim.

To add a new plugin:

1. run ./update.py and create a commit named "vimPlugins: Update",
2. add the new plugin to vim-plugin-names and add overrides if required to overrides.nix,
3. run ./update.py again and create a commit named "vimPlugins.[name]: init at [version]" (where name and version can be found in generated.nix), and
4. create a pull request.

Important repositories

• vim-pi is a plugin repository from VAM plugin manager meant to be used by others as well used by

• vim2nix which generates the .nix code