My Vim Setup

Here for your perusal. Steal what you like, ignore what you don't. Do what you will with it ;)

Below I describe the high-level ideas. As always, check out the code for the real goodies.

I've been using vim for 15+ years now, and have gone through a number of config iterations. They all involved many plugins. There's nothing wrong with plugins, but this time I wanted to do things a little differently...

I implemented all desired functionality as minimally as reasonably¹ possible in plain vimscript. This has let me vim's built-in features² on a deeper level, explore vimscript³, and consider what features I actually want. The goal is to mold the tool to my way of working instead of the other way around.

¹ While still being ergonomic and featureful
² So... so many features
³ Quirky, but not as bad as its reputation

I implemented a lot of functionality that I used to get from plugins in plain vimscript.

All of these features combined are implemented in about the same amount of code as a single typical vim plugin. This is because they don't have to be robust enough to support Every Conceivable Use-Case, or provide config variables for Every Conceivable Option. Instead, I can tweak the code to work the way I want. And that's kind of the point. Vim is extremely moldable! Make it work for you.

Each of these has its own section in .vimrc, so you can go check out how they work and/or steal them and customize them to suit you.

I note line counts below as a primitive heuristic for complexity. These are normal readable lines, not code-golf.

Listed roughly in order of how often I use them each day:

• Auto-Pair (~30 lines)
  • Similar to auto-pairs
  • Automatically insert closing paren/bracket/brace/etc when typing the opening one
  • Skipping over the closing character. So if you type ) next to a ), the cursor skips over it instead of doubling it up.
  • Deleting an opening character deletes the closing character.
    • I didn't want to imap <expr> <bs> so right now it is just essentially imap <expr> (<bs> "", so it only deletes the opening character if you backspace right away. I might change this in the future.
  • Some other niceties
• Comments (~15 lines)
  • Comment/uncomment the selected lines, as per commentary
• Fuzzy Find (~30 lines)
  • Integrates fzy to select all kinds of things like files, open buffers, or any other list of things
• Most-Recently-Used files (~20 lines)
  • Keeps track of recently opened files, and uses fzy to easily open them back later
  • Mostly implemented with sed
  • Prune non-existent files with :MRUPrune (another 7 lines)
• Terminal/REPL Interaction (~75 lines)
  • Makes interacting with a :terminal very easy. You can:
    • send any text to the terminal (current line, current selection, etc...)
    • associate a different terminal with each buffer (for instance, send lua code to a lua repl, and tcl code to a tclsh repl). Each buffer has a "target" terminal.
    • a terminal's target is itself, so you can easily eval history
    • ...more stuff...
  • This is my most complex "plugin-like". By removing some of the features I don't use and refactoring what's left, I could probably get it down to about 40 lines and have a cleaner feature set.
• Per-project vimrc (7 lines)
  • A simple mapping to load a .vimrc at the top level of a git repo, which I have ended up using a lot for project-specific tasks, imaps, syntax highlighting, etc...
• Directory Browsing (13 lines, including netrw config)
  • Simple browsing via - key à la dirvish or vinegar with the creature comforts like selecting the current file automatically.
• Snippets (~35 lines)
  • Similar to snipmate or neosnippet
  • Different snippets per filetype
  • Supports one-off and named placeholders
  • foo\<tab> to insert the foo snippet
  • Trivial to create snippets, so I can create a standard set for a language, or just a few for my current task:
    • Each snippet stored in its own file in ~/.vim/snips/<filetype>
    • :Snip <name> opens a split window with the snippet file
    • %%%% is a one-off placeholder
    • %%name%% is a named placeholder. Filling it in will fill in all other placeholders with the same name
    • Simple example:

    for (%%%% %%var%%=0; %%var%% < %%%%; %%var%%++) {
        %%%%
    }
    

    • Snippets are inserted at the correct indent level, though they are written left-aligned like normal files.
  • In insert mode, c-]/c-\ jump to the next/previous placeholder
• Async Tasks (~30 lines)
  • Easily launch background tasks, and see their results in the quickfix window, if desired. Similar to dispatch.
• Surround (26 lines, including mappings)
  • Similar to tpope's surround
  • Wrap the selected text in parens/brackets/etc...
  • Convert a grouping into another (for instance (xyz) → [xyz])
  • Some other niceties
• Align text by delimiters (~2 lines)
  • Similar to easy-align
  • Implemented entirely with sed and column

These make it easy enough to hop around the visible region (and scroll quickly), that they eliminated any need or desire for plugins like easymotion.

These just make it easier to write and quit windows.

I prefer jumping to the exact location of the mark instead of the beginning of its line, and ' is easier to reach than `.

These often make good alternatives to the command-line, and really open up the ability to mold vim in ad-hoc ways. I got the idea from emacs ielm, and now I use it dozens of times each day in vim.

I generally use ; followed by one or two characters to insert commonly-used text. For instance, in C files, I map ;d to #define and ;i to #include .

Some particularly helpful ones for writing vimscript are in .vim/after/ftplugin/vim.vim and the Command-Line Conveniences subsection in .vimrc.

A much simpler and lighter alternative to things like LSP. It has good support in vanilla vim, and doesn't require you to keep a background daemon running.

I have a lot of customizations for each language, mainly falling into these categories:

• imaps - Shortcuts to save keystrokes
• repl - I try to develop in a repl-like workflow in every language
• tools - Shortcuts for piping to / integrating with language-specific tools

Check out the Mappings section of .vimrc for all the global mappings. They're generally organized mnemonically, though the mnemonic may not be obvious at first unless you're me.

I have tried to intelligently remap - to _ and vice versa, so that I can do snake_case variables without hitting shift, while also typing a minus or sql/lua comment without hitting shift. However, I've yet to come up with a heuristic that does the right thing often enough. I still trip on it a few times each day. But on balance, it saves me more keystrokes than it costs me by 10x or more.

• The manual (:h, vimhelp.org, quickref).

  • It's incredibly thorough, but sometimes it can be hard to find exactly what you need if you don't already know what it's called. C'est la vie. I still use it multiple times each day.
  • If you have a few minutes to kill, try browsing a random section. You're guaranteed to learn something new!

• Learn Vim the Hard Way

  • I found myself referencing this site frequently as I began digging deeper into vimscript. I still refer back to it if I can't remember the exact name of some function, but I know what chapter it's in.

• Any of tpope's plugins

  • "There's gold in them thar hills!"

• #vim on Libera IRC

  • The people there are generally knowledgeable and helpful