Lead Image © Thomas Reichhart, 123RF.com

Managing Vim plugins

Plug and Play

Article from ADMIN 39/2017

By Bruce Byfield

We look at some tools that can help take the pain out of managing plugins.

The Vim text editor [1] is one of the most popular pieces of free software ever written. Since its first release in 1991, Vim has become available for all major operating systems. It is installed by default on most Linux distributions, and, in the 2016 LinuxQuestions Reader Choice Awards, outpolled its long-time rival Emacs by more than three to one – being the first choice of more than 30 percent of responders [2]. Much of this popularity is due to the degree of customization created by its plugins – almost 1,600, according to the VimAwesome site [3], and even that number may be low.

Most users, of course, use fewer than a dozen Vim plugins. However, even that number can be difficult to delete, although that is probably unnecessary with a recent version of Vim. The truth is, Vim's original design was not intended for plugins. Probably no one is using the oldest plugins, which needed to be unarchived in a user's home directory and were only recognized when the command :helptags was run from within Vim. Yet even the default method of installation – dumping all plugins in ~/.vim/plugin – can make knowing what to update or delete difficult, even with just a few plugins.

To make installing easier, four plugin managers have been developed: vim-addon-manager, Pathogen, and its enhancements Vundle and Neobundle. Which of these tools you should use depends on the services you prefer, but all take much of the pain out of managing plugins

Vim-addon-manager

Vim-addon-manager [4] is a Linux tool available in many distributions, including Debian, Ubuntu, and Fedora. Unlike the other solutions, vim-addon-manager is installed outside of Vim as a

...

Use Express-Checkout link below to read the full article (PDF).