Neovim

Neovim is a fork of Vim aiming to improve the codebase, allowing for easier implementation of APIs, improved user experience and plugin implementation.

Due to the large number of plugins, it is possible to extend and configure neovim to fit the exact needs of the user. Many users start working with neovim with a preconfigured neovim distribution (such as LazyVim, AstroVim, NVChad) or use the preconfigured NixOS package for LunarVim. This way you can learn what is possible. Experienced users often advise to familiarize themselves with neovim and then create their own configuration from scratch.

For people who like the modal text editors in a terminal but don't want to spend so much time configuring it, the Helix editor might be the right choice.

Installation

System-wide

If you do not use Home Manager, you can use the following code in your NixOS configuration:

programs.neovim = {
  enable = true;
  defaultEditor = true;
};

You can also manually add Neovim to your packages. This should only be used if the two version above do not work for you.

environment.systemPackages = [ pkgs.neovim ];

With Home Manager

Home Manager has a module for Neovim, which can be enabled via

programs.neovim = {
  enable = true;
  extraConfig = ''
    set number relativenumber
  '';
};

More information about the module can be found here: Home Manager Manual.

Configuration

Neovim shares most of its configuration with Vim. See the Vim page for more details on the use of both.

System-wide

The NixOS module does not have an extraConfig option as the Home Manager module does. Instead, you can use the programs.neovim.configure option as described here.

The following example configures RC commands and enables the plugin ctrlp to support fuzzy file search (see homepage on how to use it)

programs.neovim = {
  enable = true;
  configure = {
    customRC = ''
      set number
      set cc=80
      set list
      set listchars=tab:→\ ,space:·,nbsp:␣,trail:•,eol:¶,precedes:«,extends:»
      if &diff
        colorscheme blue
      endif
    '';
    packages.myVimPackage = with pkgs.vimPlugins; {
      start = [ ctrlp ];
    };
  };
};

To set Neovim as your default editor:

programs.neovim = {
  defaultEditor = true;
};

Further, the NixOS module does also expose options to automatically add vi and vim aliases. To use them, add the following to your NixOS configuration:

programs.neovim = {
  viAlias = true;
  vimAlias = true;
};

With Home Manager

The Home Manager module does not expose many configuration options. Therefore, the easiest way to get started is to use the extraConfig option. You can copy your old config or directly load your default Neovim config via:

programs.neovim.extraConfig = lib.fileContents ../path/to/your/init.vim;

To use Neovim as your default editor, you can set the EDITOR environmental variable to "nvim" by adding the following to your NixOS configuration:

environment.variables.EDITOR = "nvim";

The Home Manager module does also expose options to automatically add vi and vim aliases. To use them, add the following to your Home Manager configuration:

programs.neovim = {
  viAlias = true;
  vimAlias = true;
};

Installing Plugins

Plugins can be installed using the programs.neovim.plugins option. You can add only the plugin, or the plugin with its corresponding config:

programs.neovim.plugins = [
  pkgs.vimPlugins.nvim-tree-lua
  {
    plugin = pkgs.vimPlugins.vim-startify;
    config = "let g:startify_change_to_vcs_root = 0";
  }
];

If you only add the plugin, you can add the configuration as described above.

An index of official packages can be found in on search.nixos.org. In addition to the official packages, there are several user maintained repositories, such as awesome-neovim-plugins or NixNeovimPlugins. Plugins which are not available in any of these repositories may be integrated using the vimUtils.buildVimPlugin function from Nixpkgs:

pkgs.vimUtils.buildVimPlugin {
  pname = "whatever";
  version = "whatever";
  src = builtins.fetchGit {
    url = "https://github.com/example/whatever.git";
    ref = "whatever";
  };
  buildScript = ":";
}

Tips and tricks

Neovim Nightly

You can also use the Neovim Nightly Overlay to install the most recent current nightly version of neovim.

You can run the master version via the following command:

nix run "github:nix-community/neovim-nightly-overlay"

Developing / Building

If you want to develop neovim, you may use

 nix develop "github:nix-community/neovim-nightly-overlay"

to acquire a suitable environment.

Note on Lua plugins

Due to how the runtimepath for Lua modules is processed, your configuration may require packadd! plugin-name to require a module. A home-manager example:

programs.neovim = {
  plugins = [
    {
      plugin = pkgs.vimPlugins.nvim-colorizer-lua;
      config = ''
        packadd! nvim-colorizer.lua
        lua << END
require 'colorizer'.setup {
  '*'; -- Highlight all files, but customize some others.
  '!vim'; -- Exclude vim from highlighting.
}
END
      '';
    }
  ];
}

See Also

• Vim
• Tree-sitter for Neovim