3 ms·

As a user, what benefit do I have switching from vim to neovim?

by coherentpony 12y ago

ebiester 12y ago
Nothing yet. It's not ready. Eventually, better plugins and GUIs without losing what makes vim so productive.
- coherentpony 12y ago
  Cool, thanks.
iamartnez 12y ago
My understanding is that Neovim will make it much easier for plugins to execute tasks in parallel and in the background. I'd use that for running ctags on save without blocking the editor, for example.
- lorenzfx 12y ago
  like this new Floobits plugin [0] [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8559146 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8559146
- riffraff 12y ago
  The reason I'm following neovim is that I'm hoping for a future where linting doesn't freeze my editor on save. Sadly, I do like my gui, so I'll have to wait a bit more
wffurr 12y ago
A plugin like eclim would benefit greatly from the new multi-process model.
splinterofchaos 12y ago
The most popular neovim feature (based on reddit's reactions) seems to be job control, although not enough people are using it. You can start an asynchronous job via `jobstart('name', 'prog', ['arg'...])` which will return a job id. You can send data to the job via `jobsend(id, 'text'). Every time the program has some output available, it will trigger an autocmd to let you process it. (This happens synchronously.) We have refactored some of the code base using modern coding standards, which makes it more hackable. Some of these systems have become more efficient by, for example, using pipes over temp files. We accept upstream patches in order to stay on top of vim, so I hope that no one will ever not use neovim because of a feature lacking (aside from a GUI--see below). neovim creates a socket for each instance that external programs can communicate with, allowing one to write a plugin or extension in any language, providing it has a msgpack implementation. These plugins may eventually control things like the GUIs, spell checkers, syntax analysers, allowing nvim to become more focused, like a micro-kernel. As of right now, many people have switched without having any real problems.
- ThrustVectoring 12y ago
  Any plans for nuking vimscript?
  - wal0 12y ago
    No, Vim plugins wouldn't work anymore. Vimscript will be transpiled to Lua under the hood, though, and other languages will be fully supported for writing plugins.
    - splinterofchaos 12y ago
      They'll work just fine, by being "transpiled".
  - splinterofchaos 12y ago
    Nope. See the bottom item on the FAQ: https://github.com/neovim/neovim/wiki/FAQ#are-plugin-authors-encouraged-to-port-their-plugins-from-viml-to-lua-do-you-plan-to-support-viml-indefinitely-1152 https://github.com/neovim/neovim/wiki/FAQ#are-plugin-authors...

As a user, what benefit do I have switching from vim to neovim?

ebiester 12y ago

Nothing yet. It's not ready. Eventually, better plugins and GUIs without losing what makes vim so productive.

coherentpony 12y ago
Cool, thanks.

iamartnez 12y ago

My understanding is that Neovim will make it much easier for plugins to execute tasks in parallel and in the background. I'd use that for running ctags on save without blocking the editor, for example.

lorenzfx 12y ago
like this new Floobits plugin [0] [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8559146 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8559146
riffraff 12y ago
The reason I'm following neovim is that I'm hoping for a future where linting doesn't freeze my editor on save. Sadly, I do like my gui, so I'll have to wait a bit more

wffurr 12y ago

A plugin like eclim would benefit greatly from the new multi-process model.

splinterofchaos 12y ago

The most popular neovim feature (based on reddit's reactions) seems to be job control, although not enough people are using it. You can start an asynchronous job via `jobstart('name', 'prog', ['arg'...])` which will return a job id. You can send data to the job via `jobsend(id, 'text'). Every time the program has some output available, it will trigger an autocmd to let you process it. (This happens synchronously.) We have refactored some of the code base using modern coding standards, which makes it more hackable. Some of these systems have become more efficient by, for example, using pipes over temp files. We accept upstream patches in order to stay on top of vim, so I hope that no one will ever not use neovim because of a feature lacking (aside from a GUI--see below). neovim creates a socket for each instance that external programs can communicate with, allowing one to write a plugin or extension in any language, providing it has a msgpack implementation. These plugins may eventually control things like the GUIs, spell checkers, syntax analysers, allowing nvim to become more focused, like a micro-kernel. As of right now, many people have switched without having any real problems.

ThrustVectoring 12y ago
Any plans for nuking vimscript?
- wal0 12y ago
  No, Vim plugins wouldn't work anymore. Vimscript will be transpiled to Lua under the hood, though, and other languages will be fully supported for writing plugins.
  - splinterofchaos 12y ago
    They'll work just fine, by being "transpiled".
- splinterofchaos 12y ago
  Nope. See the bottom item on the FAQ: https://github.com/neovim/neovim/wiki/FAQ#are-plugin-authors-encouraged-to-port-their-plugins-from-viml-to-lua-do-you-plan-to-support-viml-indefinitely-1152 https://github.com/neovim/neovim/wiki/FAQ#are-plugin-authors...