Vim
Installation
Basic Install
environment.systemPackages = with pkgs; [ vim ];
or
environment.systemPackages = with pkgs; [ vim_configurable ];
Using Home Manager
Vim can easily be set up using Home Manager. Here's a minimal example:
programs.vim = {
enable = true;
plugins = with pkgs.vimPlugins; [ vim-airline ];
settings = { ignorecase = true; };
extraConfig = ''
set mouse=a
'';
};
See [1] for the full set of options.
NeoVim with Coc for Python
For NeoVim use this home manager config: https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/issues/98166#issuecomment-725319238
Custom setup without using Home Manager
Vim plugins can be installed with the help of nix. You can omit using vim plugin managers and do everything in your .nixpkgs/config
.
A lot of documentation about package management and configuration of vim in nix is stored at vim-utils.nix in nixpkgs.
Customizations
Both vim and neovim can be further configured to include your favorite plugins and additional libraries. To list all available vim plugins, run nix search nixpkgs.vimPlugins
.
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
}
};
Note that dynamically loading with opt may be buggy and the workaround is to use start instead.
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" ];
Using Vim-Plug as manager
vimrcConfig.plug.plugins = with pkgs.vimPlugins; [vim-addon-nix youcompleteme];
Adding new plugins
As per the instructions found in https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/blob/master/doc/languages-frameworks/vim.section.md
- First run
./update.py
. - Commit the changes with the commit message "vimPlugins: Update".
- Add your plugin to ./vim-plugin-names (please try to maintain the list alphabetically sorted). You can customize the branch by appending for example
@main
to an entry (search the file for examples) - Run
./update.py
once again to generate the plugin's nix expression. - Commit your changes one more time, this time with the message formated as such: "vimPlugins.[plugin-name]: init at [version]".
- 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./update.py
. They will be included in the generated code.
Notes Regarding Plugins
For additional info, you may wish to check https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/tree/master/pkgs/misc/vim-plugins.
Add a new custom plugin to the users packages
Sometimes you do not want to change upstream plugins, for this you can use vimUtils.buildVimPlugin
to create your own:
let
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 {
vimrcConfig.packages.myVimPackage = with pkgs.vimPlugins; {
start = [ vim-better-whitespace ];
};
})
};
Vim as a Python IDE
The following snippet will make a full featured python IDE.
Using language client
vim_configurable.customize {
vimrcConfig = {
customRC = ''
let g:LanguageClient_serverCommands = {
\ 'python': ['pyls']
\ }
nnoremap <F5> :call LanguageClient_contextMenu()<CR>
nnoremap <silent> gh :call LanguageClient_textDocument_hover()<CR>
nnoremap <silent> gd :call LanguageClient_textDocument_definition()<CR>
nnoremap <silent> gr :call LanguageClient_textDocument_references()<CR>
nnoremap <silent> gs :call LanguageClient_textDocument_documentSymbol()<CR>
nnoremap <silent> <F2> :call LanguageClient_textDocument_rename()<CR>
nnoremap <silent> gf :call LanguageClient_textDocument_formatting()<CR>
'';
packages.myVimPackage = with pkgs.vimPlugins; {
start = [ LanguageClient-neovim ];
}
};
Then put the following expression in environment.systemPackages
or in the home-manager package list,
to install python-language-server:
(python3.withPackages(ps: [
ps.python-language-server
# the following plugins are optional, they provide type checking, import sorting and code formatting
ps.pyls-mypy ps.pyls-isort ps.pyls-black
]))
Real life examples
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
.
A better alternative to youcompleteme for C/C++ is to use cquery in combination with the LanguageClient-neovim. It will also find in c header files when used in a nix-shell if you install cquery from nixpkgs as it uses a custom shell wrapper
Python 3 support for vim
If you have defined your vim configuration in a `./my_vim.nix` file you can install vim with the python 3 support instead of python2 by overriding the python version like the following:
(pkgs.callPackage ./my_vim.nix {
vim_configurable = vim_configurable.override { python = python3; };
})
gvim and gview
gvim
and gview
may be installed using the vimHugeX
attribute name (package name vim_configurable
).
$ nix-env -iA nixos.vimHugeX
System wide vim/nvim configuration
If you want a system wide "baseline" configuration for vim/nvim here are two examples: The vim example has python3 support as mentioned above.
{ pkgs, ... }:
{
environment.variables = { EDITOR = "vim"; };
environment.systemPackages = with pkgs; [
((vim_configurable.override { python = python3; }).customize{
name = "vim";
vimrcConfig.packages.myplugins = with pkgs.vimPlugins; {
start = [ vim-nix vim-lastplace ];
opt = [];
};
vimrcConfig.customRC = ''
" your custom vimrc
set nocompatible
set backspace=indent,eol,start
" ...
'';
}
)];
}
{ pkgs, ... }:
{
environment.variables = { EDITOR = "vim"; };
environment.systemPackages = with pkgs; [
(neovim.override {
vimAlias = true;
configure = {
packages.myPlugins = with pkgs.vimPlugins; {
start = [ vim-lastplace vim-nix ];
opt = [];
};
customRC = ''
" your custom vimrc
set nocompatible
set backspace=indent,eol,start
" ...
'';
};
}
)];
}
import these in your configuration.nix
and
{
imports =
[
./vim.nix
];
# ...
}