4 ms·

What are the most notable improvements over vim that the authors of neovim speak of? https://neovim.io https://neovim.io

climb_stealth 7y ago
I have been running it for quite a few months and there are two improvements that I can think of: 1) In visual mode you have a block cursor and in insert mode it is a |. 2) With ':set inccommand=nosplit' you get live previews for substitution calls. For example :%s/foo/bar/ will update your foos on screen whilst you type the command. Otherwise it is pretty much a drop-in replacement without issues.
- mths 7y ago
  > Otherwise it is pretty much a drop-in replacement without issues. Except for the crashes. The crashes are an issue. Don't get me wrong though, I like nvim. I use it occasionally. But the crashes are an issue.
  - tadzik_ 7y ago
    Interesting. Are you using some sophisticated plugins, some unusual platform? I've aliased vim to neovim a few years ago and it has not crashed once for me.
    - mths 7y ago
      OSX. Plugins: ale, bufexplorer, nerdtree, rust.vim, vim-airline, vim-airline-themes, vim-colors-solarized I generally start vim in my src folder on Monday and exit it on Friday. Occasionally, just on a whim, I run nvim instead. Mostly its fine. But the times I've experienced crashes or other hickups like rendering bugs forcing me to :qa!, it's been on nvim. Edit: Oh and I run it in the terminal, iTerm2 to be precise.
      - afarrell 7y ago
        I wonder if any 2-4 of the folks who’ve never had it crash would find it fun to join in a mob-debugging session where you screenshare, we all open an discord* channel, and we try and figure out the cause and solution. —— (* IM could be discord, gitter, slack, or whatever. I’d argue strongly against IRC because I think the lack of support for code blocks and especially newlines makes it harder to talk about code/stacktraces.)
        blueyed 7y ago
        You can just try with reporting them as an issue on GitHub.. :)
      - CameronNemo 7y ago
        I use macOS and iTerm2, never experienced a crash. Perhaps one of your plugins is causing the issue?
  - the_duke 7y ago
    After using nvim for several years, I've never seen it crash once.
    - wyclif 7y ago
      Same here. I use it constantly with a handful of plugins, never had an issue.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  - AdamGibbins 7y ago
    I've been using neovim for years now, I've never once had a crash.
  - seanhunter 7y ago
    No crashes here and I use it all day pretty much every day. They only real negative in my view is the startup time which is noticeably worse than vim for me. Advantages I see are - unix clipboard and middle mouse pasteboard both work out of the box without having to recompile (ie "*p and "+p and the corresponding yanks just work) whereas on vim for whatever reason I always have to rebuild my distro vim and faff about with terminals for ages - the substitution preview thing above is really great - the "terminal" window type which I don't use much but a lot of people do - the fact you have native support for python3 and python2 plugins simultaneously. Don't even want to think about how many goats had to be sacrificed to build that feature but it's cool - the ":checkhealth" diagnostic screen that gives you useful info to allow you to easily fix any problems you're having with terminal and plugin setup
    - blueyed 7y ago
      > They only real negative in my view is the startup time which is noticeably worse than vim for me. Check that this is not e.g. due to Python host detection/setup - you might have plugins that trigger both py2/py3 hosts to load for example. (hosts can be configured explicitly to skip it) Also check `nvim --startuptime /tmp/nvimlog`.
jafarlihi 7y ago
The only reason Neovim project exists in the first place is to act as a safeguard against the bus factor issues that might arise in the Vim proper.
- maccam94 7y ago
  It also exists because the vim BDFL refused to merge some patches, notably async (vim did get async after it was proven a success in neovim). Since the fork neovim has modernized and cleaned up the codebase, and has an ambitious feature roadmap which includes adding Lua as a plugin language and adding APIs for external GUIs. https://neovim.io/roadmap/ https://neovim.io/roadmap/
the_duke 7y ago
The most notable for all Vim users is probably forcing upstream vim to merge async support for plugins after refusing it initially; albeit with a different API. (there is quite some bitterness on both sides of this issue, I think) The other big win is providing a embedding API so other editors can be built on top of the core editing engine. Which resulted in multiple interesting GUI projects which you can find in other comments. Others are Lua plugin support, good terminal integration, way better default settings, ...
- phil_s_stein 7y ago
  What does "async support for plugins" mean when hands are on the keyboard? Linters/etc that run without a need for :w?
  - shriek 7y ago
    > Linters/etc that run without a need for :w? That's more to do with how you setup to trigger the commands. Async here really means that it doesn't block with your typing, jumping around in the text editor if plugin starts doing some heavy work in the background due to some action that got triggered by whatever event you had setup for plugin to do. One of the plugin that I particularly remember was syntastic (I haven't kept up with it to know if they've fixed this or not) that would just create janks every now and then if the workload was heavy.

climb_stealth 7y ago

I have been running it for quite a few months and there are two improvements that I can think of: 1) In visual mode you have a block cursor and in insert mode it is a |. 2) With ':set inccommand=nosplit' you get live previews for substitution calls. For example :%s/foo/bar/ will update your foos on screen whilst you type the command. Otherwise it is pretty much a drop-in replacement without issues.

mths 7y ago
> Otherwise it is pretty much a drop-in replacement without issues. Except for the crashes. The crashes are an issue. Don't get me wrong though, I like nvim. I use it occasionally. But the crashes are an issue.
- tadzik_ 7y ago
  Interesting. Are you using some sophisticated plugins, some unusual platform? I've aliased vim to neovim a few years ago and it has not crashed once for me.
  - mths 7y ago
    OSX. Plugins: ale, bufexplorer, nerdtree, rust.vim, vim-airline, vim-airline-themes, vim-colors-solarized I generally start vim in my src folder on Monday and exit it on Friday. Occasionally, just on a whim, I run nvim instead. Mostly its fine. But the times I've experienced crashes or other hickups like rendering bugs forcing me to :qa!, it's been on nvim. Edit: Oh and I run it in the terminal, iTerm2 to be precise.
    - afarrell 7y ago
      I wonder if any 2-4 of the folks who’ve never had it crash would find it fun to join in a mob-debugging session where you screenshare, we all open an discord* channel, and we try and figure out the cause and solution. —— (* IM could be discord, gitter, slack, or whatever. I’d argue strongly against IRC because I think the lack of support for code blocks and especially newlines makes it harder to talk about code/stacktraces.)
      - blueyed 7y ago
        You can just try with reporting them as an issue on GitHub.. :)
    - CameronNemo 7y ago
      I use macOS and iTerm2, never experienced a crash. Perhaps one of your plugins is causing the issue?
- the_duke 7y ago
  After using nvim for several years, I've never seen it crash once.
  - wyclif 7y ago
    Same here. I use it constantly with a handful of plugins, never had an issue.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- AdamGibbins 7y ago
  I've been using neovim for years now, I've never once had a crash.
- seanhunter 7y ago
  No crashes here and I use it all day pretty much every day. They only real negative in my view is the startup time which is noticeably worse than vim for me. Advantages I see are - unix clipboard and middle mouse pasteboard both work out of the box without having to recompile (ie "*p and "+p and the corresponding yanks just work) whereas on vim for whatever reason I always have to rebuild my distro vim and faff about with terminals for ages - the substitution preview thing above is really great - the "terminal" window type which I don't use much but a lot of people do - the fact you have native support for python3 and python2 plugins simultaneously. Don't even want to think about how many goats had to be sacrificed to build that feature but it's cool - the ":checkhealth" diagnostic screen that gives you useful info to allow you to easily fix any problems you're having with terminal and plugin setup
  - blueyed 7y ago
    > They only real negative in my view is the startup time which is noticeably worse than vim for me. Check that this is not e.g. due to Python host detection/setup - you might have plugins that trigger both py2/py3 hosts to load for example. (hosts can be configured explicitly to skip it) Also check `nvim --startuptime /tmp/nvimlog`.

jafarlihi 7y ago

The only reason Neovim project exists in the first place is to act as a safeguard against the bus factor issues that might arise in the Vim proper.

maccam94 7y ago
It also exists because the vim BDFL refused to merge some patches, notably async (vim did get async after it was proven a success in neovim). Since the fork neovim has modernized and cleaned up the codebase, and has an ambitious feature roadmap which includes adding Lua as a plugin language and adding APIs for external GUIs. https://neovim.io/roadmap/ https://neovim.io/roadmap/

the_duke 7y ago

The most notable for all Vim users is probably forcing upstream vim to merge async support for plugins after refusing it initially; albeit with a different API. (there is quite some bitterness on both sides of this issue, I think) The other big win is providing a embedding API so other editors can be built on top of the core editing engine. Which resulted in multiple interesting GUI projects which you can find in other comments. Others are Lua plugin support, good terminal integration, way better default settings, ...

phil_s_stein 7y ago
What does "async support for plugins" mean when hands are on the keyboard? Linters/etc that run without a need for :w?
- shriek 7y ago
  > Linters/etc that run without a need for :w? That's more to do with how you setup to trigger the commands. Async here really means that it doesn't block with your typing, jumping around in the text editor if plugin starts doing some heavy work in the background due to some action that got triggered by whatever event you had setup for plugin to do. One of the plugin that I particularly remember was syntastic (I haven't kept up with it to know if they've fixed this or not) that would just create janks every now and then if the workload was heavy.