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

Vim

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 two different methods for managing plugins:

• Vim packages (recommended)
• vim-plug (vim only)

Right now two Vim packages are available: vim which has most features that require extra dependencies disabled and vim-full which has them configurable and enabled by default.

::: {.note} vim_configurable is a deprecated alias for vim-full and refers to the fact that its build-time features are configurable. It has nothing to do with user configuration, and both the vim and vim-full packages can be customized as explained in the next section. :::

Custom configuration

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

vim-full.customize {
  # `name` optionally 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. You can also omit name to customize Vim itself. See the definition of vimUtils.makeCustomizable for all supported options.

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 Neovim:

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

Managing plugins with Vim packages

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

vim-full.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-full.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 code from the example section here
      };
    };
  };
}

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

What if your favourite Vim plugin isn’t already packaged?

If one of your favourite plugins isn't packaged, you can package it yourself:

{ config, pkgs, ... }:

let
  easygrep = pkgs.vimUtils.buildVimPlugin {
    name = "vim-easygrep";
    src = pkgs.fetchFromGitHub {
      owner = "dkprice";
      repo = "vim-easygrep";
      rev = "d0c36a77cc63c22648e792796b1815b44164653a";
      hash = "sha256-bL33/S+caNmEYGcMLNCanFZyEYUOUmSsedCVBn4tV3g=";
    };
  };
in
{
  environment.systemPackages = [
    (
      pkgs.neovim.override {
        configure = {
          packages.myPlugins = with pkgs.vimPlugins; {
          start = [
            vim-go # already packaged plugin
            easygrep # custom package
          ];
          opt = [];
        };
        # ...
      };
     }
    )
  ];
}

If your package requires building specific parts, use instead pkgs.vimUtils.buildVimPlugin.

Specificities for some plugins

Treesitter

By default nvim-treesitter encourages you to download, compile and install the required Treesitter grammars at run time with :TSInstall. This works poorly on NixOS. Instead, to install the nvim-treesitter plugins with a set of precompiled grammars, you can use nvim-treesitter.withPlugins function:

(pkgs.neovim.override {
  configure = {
    packages.myPlugins = with pkgs.vimPlugins; {
      start = [
        (nvim-treesitter.withPlugins (
          plugins: with plugins; [
            nix
            python
          ]
        ))
      ];
    };
  };
})

To enable all grammars packaged in nixpkgs, use pkgs.vimPlugins.nvim-treesitter.withAllGrammars.

Managing plugins with vim-plug

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

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

Note: this is not possible anymore for Neovim.

Adding new plugins to nixpkgs

Nix expressions for Vim plugins are stored in pkgs/applications/editors/vim/plugins. For the vast majority of plugins, Nix expressions are automatically generated by running nix-shell -p vimPluginsUpdater --run vim-plugins-updater. This creates a generated.nix file based on the plugins listed in vim-plugin-names.

When the vim updater detects an nvim-treesitter update, it also runs nvim-treesitter/update.py $(nix-build -A vimPlugins.nvim-treesitter) to update the tree sitter grammars for nvim-treesitter.

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 nix-shell -p vimPluginsUpdater --run vim-plugins-updater 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, run nix-shell -p vimPluginsUpdater --run 'vim-plugins-updater add "[owner]/[name]"'. NOTE: This script automatically commits to your git repository. Be sure to check out a fresh branch before running.

Finally, there are some plugins that are also packaged in nodePackages because they have Javascript-related build steps, such as running webpack. Those plugins are not listed in vim-plugin-names or managed by vimPluginsUpdater at all, and are included separately in overrides.nix. Currently, all these plugins are related to the coc.nvim ecosystem of the Language Server Protocol integration with Vim/Neovim.

Testing Neovim plugins

nvimRequireCheck=MODULE is a simple test which checks if Neovim can requires the lua module MODULE without errors. This is often enough to catch missing dependencies.

This can be manually added through plugin definition overrides in the overrides.nix.

  gitsigns-nvim = super.gitsigns-nvim.overrideAttrs {
    dependencies = [ self.plenary-nvim ];
    nvimRequireCheck = "gitsigns";
  };

Plugin optional configuration

Some plugins require specific configuration to work. We choose not to patch those plugins but expose the necessary configuration under PLUGIN.passthru.initLua for neovim plugins. For instance, the unicode-vim plugin needs the path towards a unicode database so we expose the following snippet vim.g.Unicode_data_directory="${self.unicode-vim}/autoload/unicode" under vimPlugins.unicode-vim.passthru.initLua.

Updating plugins in nixpkgs

Run the update script with a GitHub API token that has at least public_repo access. Running the script without the token is likely to result in rate-limiting (429 errors). For steps on creating an API token, please refer to GitHub's token documentation.

nix-shell -p vimPluginsUpdater --run 'vim-plugins-updater --github-token=mytoken' # or set GITHUB_API_TOKEN environment variable

Alternatively, set the number of processes to a lower count to avoid rate-limiting.

nix-shell -p vimPluginsUpdater --run 'vim-plugins-updater --proc 1'

If you want to update only certain plugins, you can specify them after the update command. Note that you must use the same plugin names as the pkgs/applications/editors/vim/plugins/vim-plugin-names file.

nix-shell -p vimPluginsUpdater --run 'vim-plugins-updater update "nvim-treesitter" "LazyVim"'

How to maintain an out-of-tree overlay of vim plugins ?

You can use the updater script to generate basic packages out of a custom vim plugin list:

nix-shell -p vimPluginsUpdater --run vim-plugins-updater -i vim-plugin-names -o generated.nix --no-commit

with the contents of vim-plugin-names being for example:

repo,branch,alias
pwntester/octo.nvim,,

You can then reference the generated vim plugins via:

{
  myVimPlugins = pkgs.vimPlugins.extend (
    (pkgs.callPackage ./generated.nix {})
  );
}