neovim

🌱 This post is in the growth phase. It may still be useful as it grows up.

I’ve avoided a heavily customized experience for most of my life. This is doubly true with Vim.

For me, Vim is a passport. I can take text-editing powers to any tool with decent Vim emulation. And I do. I love using today’s cloud coding environments and Vim-capable second-brain tools (like Obsidian).

But, with VSCode, I can utilize neovim via the neovim-vscode extension.

I’ve tried this extension before. But I didn’t want to dive into configuration before I had a way to share it between machines. And now I do.

Here are some things I’ve learned so far.

Install neovim

brew install neovim

Lua

neovim supports both lua and VimScript. VimScript is a trash fire burning a fresh hole in the atmosphere. So, I’m opting for Lua — another language I don’t know.

~/.config/nvim/init.lua

[init.lua][] is a file that executes before neovim starts, when placed in the ~/.config/nvim/ path.

init.lua

neovim-vscode integration

There’s a condition that can be used to load extensions only in VS Code (or neovim).

if vim.g.vscode then
    -- VSCode extension
else
    -- ordinary Neovim
end

lazy.nvim

neovim includes a package management system based on the filesystem. Download packages into privileged folders and they will autoload.
For that reason, you don’t need a dedicated package manager.

However, I’m operating across several systems. And I’d like my dotfiles not to balloon with plugin source code. So, I’m using lazy.nvim.

To set it up, add all this to init.lua and run nvim in the terminal.

local lazypath = vim.fn.stdpath("data") .. "/lazy/lazy.nvim"
if not vim.loop.fs_stat(lazypath) then
    vim.fn.system({
        "git",
        "clone",
        "--filter=blob:none",
        "https://github.com/folke/lazy.nvim.git",
        "--branch=stable", -- latest stable release
        lazypath,
    })
end
vim.opt.rtp:prepend(lazypath)

This conditionally clones lazy if it doesn’t exist and adds it to the runtime path.

You can utilize it with a setup call.

-- Make sure to set `mapleader` before lazy so your mappings are correct
vim.g.mapleader = " "

require("lazy").setup({
    -- packages table
})

plugin: nvim-surround

nvim-surround is my one non-negotiable plugin.
Here’s how it’s set up in neovim.

Add kylechui/nvim-surround to the lazy setup() package table.

{
    "kylechui/nvim-surround",
    version = "*", -- Use for stability; omit to use `main` branch for the latest features
    event = "VeryLazy",
    config = function()
        require("nvim-surround").setup({
            -- Configuration here, or leave empty to use defaults
        })
    end
}

This setup is a skeleton that leaves you with some config options.