Vim

Vim plugins can be installed with the help of nix. You can omit using vim plugin managers and do everything in your .nixpkgs/config.

Customizations

Both vim and neovim can be further configured to include your favorite plugins and additional libraries.

Add the following code to your ~/.nixpkgs/config.nix:

{
  packageOverrides = pkgs: with pkgs; {
    myVim = vim_configurable.customize {
      name = "vim-with-plugins";
      # add here code from the example section
    }
    myNeovim = neovim.override {
      configure = {
        customRC = ''
          # here your custom configuration goes!
        '';
        packages.myVimPackage = with pkgs.vimPlugins; {
          # see examples below how to use custom packages
          start = [ ];
          opt = [ ];
        };      
    }
  }
}

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

Examples

Apply custom vimrc configuration

vim_configurable.customize {
  name = "vim-with-plugins";
  # add custom .vimrc lines like this:
  vimrcConfig.customRC = ''
    set hidden
    set colorcolumn=80 
  '';
}

Using vim's builtin packaging capability

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
  }
};

Using VAM as manager

You can add this to you nix configuration to get vim with custom .vimrc and listed plugins.

vim_configurable.customize {
  name = "vim-with-plugins";
  vimrcConfig.vam.knownPlugins = pkgs.vimPlugins; # optional
  vimrcConfig.vam.pluginDictionaries = [
    # load always
    { name = "youcompleteme"; }
    { names = [ "youcompleteme" "foo" ]; }
    # only load when opening a .php file
    { name = "phpCompletion"; ft_regex = "^php\$"; }
    { name = "phpCompletion"; filename_regex = "^.php\$"; }
    # provide plugin which can be loaded manually:
    { name = "phpCompletion"; tag = "lazy"; }
  ];
};

Full documentation at VAM homepage.

Using Pathogen as manager

There is a pathogen implementation as well, but its startup is slower and [VAM] has more features.

vimrcConfig.pathogen.knownPlugins = vimPlugins; # optional
vimrcConfig.pathogen.pluginNames = [ "vim-addon-nix" "youcompleteme" ];

Adding new plugins

• Check https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/tree/master/pkgs/misc/vim-plugins
• Add your plugin to ./vim-plugin-names
• Generate via nix-shell -p vimPlugins.pluginnames2nix --command "vim-plugin-names-to-nix"
• If you need to add additional code/patches to the generated code, add those lines to pkgs/misc/vim-plugins/vim2nix/additional-nix-code and rerun vim-plugin-names-to-nix. They will be included in the generated code.

Add a new custom plugin to the users packages

Sometimes you do not want to change upstream plugins, for this you can use vimrcConfig.vam.knownPlugins and vimrcConfig.vam.pluginDirectories like this:

let
  customPlugins.vim-better-whitespace = pkgs.vimUtils.buildVimPlugin {
    name = "vim-better-whitespace";
    src = pkgs.fetchFromGitHub {
      owner = "ntpeters";
      repo = "vim-better-whitespace";
      rev = "984c8da518799a6bfb8214e1acdcfd10f5f1eed7";
      sha256 = "10l01a8xaivz6n01x6hzfx7gd0igd0wcf9ril0sllqzbq7yx2bbk";
    };
  };

in {
   users.users.<yourNickname>.packages = [
    (pkgs.vim_configurable.customize {
      name = "vim";
      vimrcConfig.vam.knownPlugins = pkgs.vimPlugins // customPlugins;
      vimrcConfig.vam.pluginDictionaries = [ 
        { names = "vim-better-whitespace" ]; } ]
    })
};

Real life examples

• Jagajaga’s config
• andrewrk's config

YouCompleteMe

Currently the youcompleteme plugin uses unwrapped clang on linux. This causes it to not find stdlib.h. There is a workaround you can put in your .ycm_extra_conf.py file, which works by executing the C/C++ compiler and getting it to output the list of search paths - which includes the search path to find stdlib.h.