nixpkgs/doc/languages-frameworks/vim.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

You'll get a vim(-your-suffix) in PATH also loading the plugins you want. Loading can be deferred; see examples.

Vim packages, VAM (=vim-addon-manager) and Pathogen are supported to load packages.

Custom configuration

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

vim_configurable.customize {
  name = "vim-with-plugins";

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

Vim packages

To store you plugins in Vim 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`
    opt = [ phpCompletion elm-vim ];
    # To automatically load a plugin when opening a filetype, add vimrc lines like:
    # autocmd FileType php :packadd phpCompletion
  }
};

VAM

dependencies by 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'' ]; }
]

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