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I've avoided neovim because my current vim setup justworks™ and i trully depend on it for being productive on my job. As time goes by i really feel like i shoul

by gtsop 5y ago

I've avoided neovim because my current vim setup justworks™ and i trully depend on it for being productive on my job. As time goes by i really feel like i should switch based on how the two projects progress. Do you know of a resource that could hold my hand?

rmadriz 5y ago
Well in theory everything that works in vim will work in neovim (there's a few exceptions[^1]). So you really don't loose anything by installing neovim and using your same .vimrc for it. You can start experimenting with Lua and the new plugins whenever you're able to. [1]: https://github.com/neovim/neovim/issues/1716 https://github.com/neovim/neovim/issues/1716
- gtsop 5y ago
  Thanks for all the replies, didn't know it was meant to be a drop-in replacement, will give it a try :)
petepete 5y ago
When I switched in 2018 my config essentially just worked, I had to replace a plugin that no longer worked but everything else went smoothly, the process took about ten minutes.
junon 5y ago
Err unless something has changed, everything that works in vim8 should work in neovim. It was a drop-in replacement for me. Nothing new to learn unless you're a plugin developer.
- the_duke 5y ago
  The exception is the async API which was first implemented by Neovim, but Vim followed with something incompatible. Most plugins that need it are compatible with both though.
rectang 5y ago
I've been using MacVim for 15 years; it has been pretty much solid the entire time, and I'm used to its mouse integration. When I started out, I was doing a lot of cross-platform development and there was a Windows version of Vim which behaved almost the same. It was great to have a powerful text editing experience which was pretty much the same everywhere. I tried out NeoVim, but as far as I can tell, it seems to be terminal-only/keyboard-only? I can use Vim keyboard-only (certainly I do that all the time over ssh), but it's not my preference. My second choice for editing behind MacVim isn't NeoVim but VSCode, but I don't use VSCode with Vim bindings because in my experience grafting Vim bindings onto any editor not Vim won't be feature complete. In a perfect world, there would be an IDE which is truly a Vim-style modal editor at its core.
- andrewl 5y ago
  I just started looking into Neovim, and I had the same concern about it being terminal-only. But then I saw this on the Neovim site: "Graphical interfaces are not packaged with Neovim. GUIs are not limited by terminal capabilities and can choose to override the rendering of certain neovim elements (cursor, tabline, popup menu, etc)...See Neovim's wiki[1] for a list of many of the available GUIs." [1] https://github.com/neovim/neovim/wiki/Related-projects#gui https://github.com/neovim/neovim/wiki/Related-projects#gui
  - rectang 5y ago
    This looks interesting: https://github.com/asvetliakov/vscode-neovim https://github.com/asvetliakov/vscode-neovim > This extension uses a full embedded Neovim instance, no more half-complete VIM emulation! VSCode's native functionality is used for insert mode and editor commands, making the best use of both editors. I like lots of things about VSCode, but there are inefficiencies with editing that just drive me bananas so I keep falling back to good old familiar MacVim. For instance, line wrapping, auto-indenting, and mouse-select-then-rewrap in comments — comment support in the Vim ecosystem seems to have been designed by and for people who really care about good documentation, while I have to work much harder to get my comments and docs to look good when editing with VSCode. Hopefully the mechanism of embedding a full NeoVim instance will allow for a moe-or-less feature-complete Vim editing experince.
petre 5y ago
I have the same setup in both vim8 and neovim. It's symlinked over from neovim, because I like the xdg ~/.config dir better, keeps things tidier. Basically pathogen, lightline and vim polyglot. I use vim8 most if the time out of habbit. I like Lua better but I understand it has poor handling of strings and I don't know how that fares with and editor extension language.
- leephillips 5y ago
  How is Lua’s string handling supposed to be poor?
  - _TwoFinger 5y ago
    > it has poor handling of strings and I don't know how that fares with an editor extension language. I guess the parent refers to Lua treating strings as simple byte arrays, whereas a text editor has to deal with characters in various encodings, some of which can be multi-byte.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
halostatue 5y ago
I have set up a complex neovim configuration, but I don’t use it. Why? Because there’s not a _single_ neovim client that is as good as MacVim.app. I paid for Oni2 (I regret that; it’s _not_ a vim replacement). I have contributed code and time to helping a couple of other GUIs fix their issues. But they are all crap compared to MacVim.app. Until that is fixed, I don’t think that there’s a good reason to consider switching.
- unrealhoang 5y ago
  You could take a look at neovide, it looks promising.
  - halostatue 5y ago
    I tried it. For various reasons, it isn’t _quite_ there. It doesn’t build a .app bundle, which means that it can’t have a proper distribution with appropriate signing &c. that would give it access to various macOS features. It doesn’t have a menu (which _does_ matter). It doesn’t have a "release" build since May 2020, meaning that the only way to get a meaningful build is to build it yourself (not a big deal, but still). It doesn’t render fonts correctly, especially on macOS: https://github.com/neovide/neovide/issues/1096 https://github.com/neovide/neovide/issues/1096, https://github.com/neovide/neovide/issues/589 https://github.com/neovide/neovide/issues/589 (although it may be related to how font names are resolved, https://github.com/neovide/neovide/issues/776 https://github.com/neovide/neovide/issues/776; https://github.com/neovide/neovide/issues/1057 https://github.com/neovide/neovide/issues/1057 seems to resolve it), https://github.com/neovide/neovide/issues/851 https://github.com/neovide/neovide/issues/851, https://github.com/neovide/neovide/issues/283 https://github.com/neovide/neovide/issues/283. The last appears to be fixed, but the former two are problematic from my perspective as a replacement for MacVim.app.

by gtsop 5y ago

rmadriz 5y ago

Well in theory everything that works in vim will work in neovim (there's a few exceptions[^1]). So you really don't loose anything by installing neovim and using your same .vimrc for it. You can start experimenting with Lua and the new plugins whenever you're able to. [1]: https://github.com/neovim/neovim/issues/1716 https://github.com/neovim/neovim/issues/1716

gtsop 5y ago
Thanks for all the replies, didn't know it was meant to be a drop-in replacement, will give it a try :)

petepete 5y ago

When I switched in 2018 my config essentially just worked, I had to replace a plugin that no longer worked but everything else went smoothly, the process took about ten minutes.

junon 5y ago

Err unless something has changed, everything that works in vim8 should work in neovim. It was a drop-in replacement for me. Nothing new to learn unless you're a plugin developer.

the_duke 5y ago
The exception is the async API which was first implemented by Neovim, but Vim followed with something incompatible. Most plugins that need it are compatible with both though.

rectang 5y ago

I've been using MacVim for 15 years; it has been pretty much solid the entire time, and I'm used to its mouse integration. When I started out, I was doing a lot of cross-platform development and there was a Windows version of Vim which behaved almost the same. It was great to have a powerful text editing experience which was pretty much the same everywhere. I tried out NeoVim, but as far as I can tell, it seems to be terminal-only/keyboard-only? I can use Vim keyboard-only (certainly I do that all the time over ssh), but it's not my preference. My second choice for editing behind MacVim isn't NeoVim but VSCode, but I don't use VSCode with Vim bindings because in my experience grafting Vim bindings onto any editor not Vim won't be feature complete. In a perfect world, there would be an IDE which is truly a Vim-style modal editor at its core.

andrewl 5y ago
I just started looking into Neovim, and I had the same concern about it being terminal-only. But then I saw this on the Neovim site: "Graphical interfaces are not packaged with Neovim. GUIs are not limited by terminal capabilities and can choose to override the rendering of certain neovim elements (cursor, tabline, popup menu, etc)...See Neovim's wiki[1] for a list of many of the available GUIs." [1] https://github.com/neovim/neovim/wiki/Related-projects#gui https://github.com/neovim/neovim/wiki/Related-projects#gui
- rectang 5y ago
  This looks interesting: https://github.com/asvetliakov/vscode-neovim https://github.com/asvetliakov/vscode-neovim > This extension uses a full embedded Neovim instance, no more half-complete VIM emulation! VSCode's native functionality is used for insert mode and editor commands, making the best use of both editors. I like lots of things about VSCode, but there are inefficiencies with editing that just drive me bananas so I keep falling back to good old familiar MacVim. For instance, line wrapping, auto-indenting, and mouse-select-then-rewrap in comments — comment support in the Vim ecosystem seems to have been designed by and for people who really care about good documentation, while I have to work much harder to get my comments and docs to look good when editing with VSCode. Hopefully the mechanism of embedding a full NeoVim instance will allow for a moe-or-less feature-complete Vim editing experince.

petre 5y ago

I have the same setup in both vim8 and neovim. It's symlinked over from neovim, because I like the xdg ~/.config dir better, keeps things tidier. Basically pathogen, lightline and vim polyglot. I use vim8 most if the time out of habbit. I like Lua better but I understand it has poor handling of strings and I don't know how that fares with and editor extension language.

leephillips 5y ago
How is Lua’s string handling supposed to be poor?
- _TwoFinger 5y ago
  > it has poor handling of strings and I don't know how that fares with an editor extension language. I guess the parent refers to Lua treating strings as simple byte arrays, whereas a text editor has to deal with characters in various encodings, some of which can be multi-byte.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]

halostatue 5y ago

I have set up a complex neovim configuration, but I don’t use it. Why? Because there’s not a _single_ neovim client that is as good as MacVim.app. I paid for Oni2 (I regret that; it’s _not_ a vim replacement). I have contributed code and time to helping a couple of other GUIs fix their issues. But they are all crap compared to MacVim.app. Until that is fixed, I don’t think that there’s a good reason to consider switching.

unrealhoang 5y ago
You could take a look at neovide, it looks promising.
- halostatue 5y ago
  I tried it. For various reasons, it isn’t _quite_ there. It doesn’t build a .app bundle, which means that it can’t have a proper distribution with appropriate signing &c. that would give it access to various macOS features. It doesn’t have a menu (which _does_ matter). It doesn’t have a "release" build since May 2020, meaning that the only way to get a meaningful build is to build it yourself (not a big deal, but still). It doesn’t render fonts correctly, especially on macOS: https://github.com/neovide/neovide/issues/1096 https://github.com/neovide/neovide/issues/1096, https://github.com/neovide/neovide/issues/589 https://github.com/neovide/neovide/issues/589 (although it may be related to how font names are resolved, https://github.com/neovide/neovide/issues/776 https://github.com/neovide/neovide/issues/776; https://github.com/neovide/neovide/issues/1057 https://github.com/neovide/neovide/issues/1057 seems to resolve it), https://github.com/neovide/neovide/issues/851 https://github.com/neovide/neovide/issues/851, https://github.com/neovide/neovide/issues/283 https://github.com/neovide/neovide/issues/283. The last appears to be fixed, but the former two are problematic from my perspective as a replacement for MacVim.app.