farisachugthai / viconf

Welcome to viconf's documentation!

.. moduleauthor:: Faris Chugthai

Imagine you're a Vim user. You're well above the simple beginner stages. You've finished Vim Tutor a handful of times. You're read a reasonably large chunk of the User Guide. You want to advance to the next level and begin taking advantage of the runtimepath. Breaking up your monolithic vimrc file is a phenomenal idea, as the folders in a user's ~/.config/nvim or ~/.vim are of supreme importance to startup.

By the way, if nothing I just said makes sense to you, go read ``:help 'runtimepath'``.

Yes I mean now. I'll still be here when you're done.

Directory Layout and Runtimepath

How are the folders in a neovim directory tree supposed to be laid out?

While each directory serves a specific purpose, depending on use case, not all need to be created and used.

The variable of importance is runtimepath. The varying directories all affect how different settings are recorded and in what order the code is ran.

We can observe this with:

set rtp   " or alternatively
echo &rtp

Runtimepath

Here's a quick summary of the folders in a standard runtimepath layout.

.. glossary::

   plugin
      Vim script files that are loaded automatically when editing any kind of
      file. Called "global plugins."

   autoload
      (Not to be confused with "plugin.") Scripts in autoload contain
      functions that are loaded only when requested by other scripts.

   ftdetect
      Scripts to detect filetypes. They can base their decision on filename
      extension, location, or internal file contents.

   ftplugin
      Scripts that are executed when editing files with known type.

   compiler
      Definitions of how to run various compilers or linters, and of how to
      parse their output. Can be shared between multiple ftplugins.
      Also not applied automatically, must be called with :compiler

   pack
      Container for Vim 8 native packages, the successor to "Pathogen"
      style package management. The native packaging system does not
      require any third-party code.

.. seealso::
   :file:`ftplugin/README.rst`

So where are my files?

This produces the weirdest behavior. In order to find where files are, one can use a series of functions Vim provides for stating the OS. However a fair number of them have clunky syntax and produce surprising behavior.:

let s:this_dir = fnameescape(fnamemodify(resolve('$MYVIMRC'), ':p:h'))
echomsg s:this_dir

That resolves to your current working directory. I couldn't begin to tell you why it does that.:

let s:this_dir = fnameescape(fnamemodify(expand('$MYVIMRC'), ':p:h'))
echomsg s:this_dir
" use this 2 lines for debugging or just in a different spot if you want
let s:something = fnamemodify(expand('<sfile>'), ':p:h')
echomsg s:something

These 2 actually echo the same location! Assuming that you put those 2 in your vimrc.

The rest of this document largely deals with setting up a comfortable editing environment for any type of plain text file regardless of platform.

Better defaults for resizing windows

I've been using Vim for 5 years. And at this point I've forgotten most of the bindings for resizing windows. They're all difficult to remember, arbitrarily chosen, and uncomfortable.

For example.:

• CTRL-W < decrease current window width N columns
• CTRL-W > increase current window width N columns

That seems sensible right? But imagine you have a buffer with 2 windows split right down the middle. Your cursor is on the right side. You want to make it larger.

Doesn't it seem like CTRL-W < should do the trick?

The default bindings make dumb assumptions like assuming your cursor is always in the top left.

But today I noticed something else.

They're really incomplete.

There is no default binding to resize your currently focused window to make it as small as possible. Put another way.:

Vim doesn't have a default binding to minimize a window.

Default bindings for this type of thing are so commonplace that I simply opted to steal the ones from tmux.:

C-Up, C-Down C-Left, C-Right

Resize the current pane in steps of one cell.

M-Up, M-Down M-Left, M-Right

Resize the current pane in steps of five cells.

Instead of using C-a or C-b as a prefix like tmux does, let's use the native Vim window prefix C-w.

So let's set it up!:

XXX

Working with Plugins

Vim-Plug is a highly recommended plugin manager, and the one that I myself use. Written by Junegunn Choi (also the author of FZF), vim-plug creates a simple way of interacting with plugins.

Beyond the basic commands you can read about in his README, vim-plug has an API that exports the command plug. This command utilizes vimscript to return a dictionary with all of your currently loaded plugins.

This dict maintains the order that the plugins were loaded into the buffer and can be accessed with

echo keys(plugs)

This feature proves phenomenally useful in a handful of situations.

For example, one may want to check whether a ftplugin was lazily loaded or loaded at all.

Echoing the plugins that Vim-Plug has loaded at startup time can also be an easy way to diagnose performance issues with Vim.

As a product of its utility, I wrote a command to quickly call the dictionary.:

command! Plugins -nargs=0 echo keys(plugs)

In addition, one could be in the situation where they may have different configuration files on different devices, and would like to check whether a plugin was installed. It's also good for debugging and seeing in what order a plugin loads.

Git Subtree

Updating vim-plug.

git subtree pull --squash --prefix=vim-plug https://github.com/junegunn/vim-plug.git master

Mappings

Mappings initially sounds like a simple enough idea as it's generally commonplace in other editors.:

Map Ctrl + Shift + F1 to some arbitrary macro

Is conventionally how this works. In Vim there are 7 different mapping modes that exist.

There are a few things to note about this. One being that the commands map and noremap do not apply to insert or command line mode. As a result, mappings that would typically conflict with inserted text can easily be used.

My mapleader is currently set to Space. If I were to map Space r e in insert mode, then any time I typed a word like 'return', the mapping would fire.

However, even the relatively permissive :noremap command doesn't touch insert mode, command line mode or terminal mode!

So how does one ensure that they have a mapping in every mode?

Unfortunately, to my knowledge there's no way to do this in one command. In fact, it currently takes 3.

map <F2> <Cmd>NERDTreeToggle
map! <F2> <Cmd>NERDTreeToggle
tmap <F2> <Cmd>NERDTreeToggle

Nowhere near the most elegant solution; unfortunately, it seems to be the only one.

However, using the <Cmd> keyword prevents us from having to prepend <C-o> from all of our normal mode mappings and <C-u> for the visual and select mode mappings.

It actually never fires a CmdlineEnter event which also preserves our command history.

Ensure that mappings use the <Cmd> idiom in place of for insert mode or for visual mode.

To date I haven't had any problems with replacing all instances of : with <Cmd>, and it makes Nvim behave in a slightly more manageable way.

Autocompletion And WildMode

Whew! Just spent a whole lot of time setting up autocompletion from scratch. Let's first start with ex-mode completion.:

set wildmode=full:list:longest,full:list

So what does this lugubrious setting provide?

Broken up with a comma, this indicates that your first use of wildchar, or Tab, will autocomplete the longest single completion. If multiple match, show them but only fill until the longest common string. This is nice because you won't have to delete extra characters that get inputted by setting only the full or list options.

Then if you hit wildchar a second time, drop the longest option. If i hit tab twice in a row, I want you to start auto-populating the command line

Insert Mode Completion

Because I can never remember these.

7. Insert mode completion ins-completion

In Insert and Replace mode, there are several commands to complete part of a keyword or line that has been typed. This is useful if you are using complicated keywords (e.g., function names with capitals and underscores).

These commands are not available when the +insert_expand feature was disabled at compile time.

Completion can be done for:

FZF in Insert Mode

For a good portion of these, I've written mappings that correspond to their respective FZF functions. In addition I've added shorter variations by dropping the redundant C-x.

For example, C-f only in insert mode invokes FZF.

That code can be found here.

Different Shells

Inexplicably, nvim started a terminal buffer using powershell with no prompting! :envvar:`SHELL` was set to pwsh and it automatically set things up correctly!:

set shell=powershell
set shellcmdflag-=c
set shellredir=>
set shellpipe=| tee
set shellquote=

And seemingly nothing else. I think most of those are the bash defaults too!

Asynchronous Buffers

This function POURS output into the current buf so make sure you're switched to a scratch buffer.

However... THIS WORKS:

call jobstart('pydoc ' . expand('<cexpr>'), {'on_stdout':{j,d,e->append(line('.'),d)}})

.. function:: jobstart

   <cexpr> is replaced with the word under the cursor, including more to form a
   C expression. E.g., when the cursor is on "arg" of "ptr->arg" then the result
   is "ptr->arg"; when the cursor is on "]" of "list[idx]" then the result is
   "list[idx]".  This is used for ``v:beval_text``.

Coc Nvim

.. glossary::

   pum
      Pop up menu

A useful command on the ex line. Prefix with :py3.:

from pprint import pprint; pprint(vim.eval('coc#list#get_chars()'))

Don't use the below mapping because CR auto-selects the first thing on the :abbr:`pum (popup-menu)` which is terrible when you're just trying to insert whitespace.:

inoremap <silent><expr> <cr> pumvisible() ? coc#_select_confirm() : "\<C-g>u\<CR>"))

Fixing Coc auto-completion in the cmdwindow

The :abbr:`pum (popup-menu)` would open after using q;. It would then raise an error on the CompleteDone event as it isn't allowed in the command window.:

autocmd! User CmdlineEnter CompleteDone

Fixed things up perfectly.

.. todo::
   Why is this raising an error.

" Example from docs
call coc#config('coc.preferences', {
     \ 'timeout': 1000,
     \})
call coc#config('languageserver', {
     \ 'ccls': {
     \   "command": "ccls",
     \   "trace.server": "verbose",
     \   "filetypes": ["c", "cpp", "objc", "objcpp"]
     \ }
     \})

" This is throwing errors. What am i doing wrong?
if !has('unix')
  call coc#config('python.condaPath', {
        \ 'C:/tools/vs/2019/Community/Common7/IDE/Extensions/Microsoft/Python/Miniconda/Miniconda3-x64/Scripts/conda'
        \ })
" else todo
endif

Beginners Intro

To say Vim has a lot of options, associated files and directories is an understatement. But these can be broken down piece by piece to be more easily digestible.

First I'll go over setting basic options.

Options

The first and most obvious file is the :file:`init.vim`. We can setup the base options like so:

let vs. set

How do we utilize let for a built-in vim variables?

let &grepprg = 'ag --nogroup --nocolor --column --vimgrep $*'

By prepending & to the variable, Vim knows we're modifying the value of a variable it recognizes and not defining our own. The single quotes are still required; however I find this more manageable than adding a \` before every single space.

&virtualedit

set virtualedit=all

It allows you to move the cursor anywhere in the window. If you enter characters or insert a visual block, Vim will add whatever spaces are required to the left of the inserted characters to keep them in place. Virtual edit mode makes it simple to edit tabular data. Turn it off with :set virtualedit=.

Diffopts

My current &diffopt.:

" Filler lines to keep text synced, 0 lines of context on diffs,
" don't diff hidden files,default foldcolumn is 2, case insensitive
set diffopt=filler,context:0,hiddenoff,foldcolumn:2,icase,indent-heuristic,horizontal
if has('patch-8.1.0360') | set diffopt+=internal,algorithm:patience | endif

.. todo::
   Annotate the rest

Creating Backups

The defaults are generally pretty good:

setglobal writebackup        " protect against crash-during-write
setglobal nobackup           " but do not persist backup after successful write

Change &backupext and &directory to things you want.

Environment Variables

Do not ever redefine :envvar:`$VIMRUNTIME`! This variable is used by both Neovim and Vim; however, both define the var differently.

If this is set in a startup file like .bash_profile or .bashrc, it will create compatibility issues between the two.

Nvim defines :envvar:`$VIMRUNTIME` as /usr/share/nvim/runtime/, in comparison to Vim's /usr/share/vim/runtime/ definition. Therefore, defining $VIMRUNTIME as /usr/share/vim/runtime/ in a startup file will cause unexpected behavior in Neovim's startup.

Extraneous Environment Variables

The below is an env var set as a convenient bridge between Ubuntu and Termux As a result it messes things up if not set, but there's no reason to halt everything. Feel free to discard if you copy/paste my vimrc.

Added: 05/18/19: Just found out Windows has an envvar %SystemRoot%:

if !exists('$_ROOT') && !empty(g:termux)
  let $_ROOT = expand('$PREFIX')
elseif !exists('$_ROOT') && !empty(g:ubuntu)
  let $_ROOT = '/usr'
elseif !exists('$_ROOT') && !empty(g:windows)
  " Or should I use ALLUSERSPROFILE
  let $_ROOT = expand('$SystemRoot')
endif

Table of Contents

.. toctree::
   :maxdepth: 3

   fugitive_help.rst
   plugin.rst
   ftplugin.rst
   colors.rst
   python.rst

Indices and tables

• :ref:`genindex`
• :ref:`modindex`
• :ref:`search`