My (Neo)Vim Setup

Updated 01.15.2024

4.20.2023

Update: I've recently updated the GitHub Repo With the latest version of the config.

I recently changed over to using NeoVim on my live streams as a sort of experiment. Since then, I've been asked to go over my setup, and how I use it, and most importantly, to post the all-important vim config file.

I could just post the file and call it a day, but I'd like to take a moment and detail some of the whats and whys of it as well.

But why vim? Isn't VSCode enough?

Sure, VS Code is excellent. It's great - it really is. But it isn't vim. I had tried some plugins in the past to emulate vim, but none of them (at the time) seemed to really work all that well.

I switched away from VS Code at work several months ago and have truthfully never looked back. I love everything about it - espectially the navigation - but even some of the aesthetic as well. While VS Code offers everything one needs, I just found myself always wanting to give vim another shot.

I figured that since I finally got it running for work purposes (which is using Typescript), there shouldn't be any reason I can't also get it working for my at-home stuff, which is 99% in C. I even managed to get a visual debugger up and running, which was my last real barrier-to-entry for swapping to vim.

Prerequisites

There are a few things I have setup outside of vim to make it look the way it does:

• zsh: I use zsh as my shell because of its extensibility. Sorry Windows users, unless you're using WSL this isn't available for you. I use Arch (btw) Linux with the Hyprland window manager (at the time of writing, at least), whose default is bash, so you'll need to make sure you have zsh installed. Same obviously goes for macOS.
• Oh My Zsh: A plugin (or series of) for zsh that gives all kinds of awesome extension to stock zsh.

  Install by entering this into a terminal:

  sh -c "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/ohmyzsh/ohmyzsh/master/tools/install.sh)"

• PowerLevel10K theme for Oh My Zsh: A great theme for omz.
  • Install by first entering this into a terminal:

    git clone https://github.com/romkatv/powerlevel10k.git $ZSH_CUSTOM/themes/powerlevel10k

    
    
  • Then open up ~/.zshrc and change the value of ZSH_THEME to look like this:

    ZSH_THEME="powerlevel10k/powerlevel10k"

    
    
  • Apply the change by restarting your terminal or sourcing the rc file via:

    source ~/.zshrc

    This will open up the configuration for PowerLevel10K.
  • Choose y to install the Meslo Nerd Font, which contains all the symbols we will need in nvim to display correctly.
  • Quit the terminal and re-open it. It will ask a few tests to ensure the font is installed correctly, as well as several other configuration options. If this doesn't come up, you can run p10k configure in the terminal.
  • NOTE: If you are using VS Code for this portion, you'll need to open settings.json and add the following line to get the font to show up:

    "terminal.integrated.fontFamily": "MesloLGS NF"

• Plugins for oh my zsh:
  • zsh-autosuggestions: Makes suggestions as you type in the terminal.
    

    git clone https://github.com/zsh-users/zsh-autosuggestions ${ZSH_CUSTOM:-~/.oh-my-zsh/custom}/plugins/zsh-autosuggestions

  • zsh-syntax-highlighting:
    

    git clone https://github.com/zsh-users/zsh-syntax-highlighting.git ${ZSH_CUSTOM:-~/.oh-my-zsh/custom}/plugins/zsh-syntax-highlighting

  • Open up ~/.zshrc and modify the plugins line to look like this:
    

    plugins=(git zsh-autosuggestions zsh-syntax-highlighting web-search)

    
    Note that web search allows you to type google kittens in the terminal and it'll open a web browser and search Google for "kittens".
  • As before, be sure to run

    source ~/.zshrc

• ripgrep: Used for fast fuzzy file searches.
  Arch Linux:

  sudo pacman -S ripgrep

  Debian/Ubuntu:

  sudo apt install ripgrep

  macOS:

  brew install ripgrep

• Terminal: WezTerm. While not exactly a pre-requisite, I now use WezTerm as my terminal emulator on all 3 platforms. It's fast, reliable, and the developer seems like a pretty cool guy who's happy to interact with his users.
  • WezTerm may be found here: https://wezfurlong.org/wezterm/index.html
  .

Neovim Setup

This setup requires a minimum version of 0.9. As of the time of writing, I am using 0.9.5. On Arch-based distributions, this may be installed with:

sudo pacman -S neovim

sudo apt install neovim

brew install neovim

Neovim allows configuration to be done using Lua files, which I have opted for here.

Plugins

Unless otherwise specified, all of these plugins are hosted on GitHub. Repos therefore have a prepended address of https://github.com/ and then the repo name as listed. NOTE: These plugins are all included in the vim config files.

• Plugin Manager

  • Packer: wbthomason/packer.nvim

• Useful lua functionality

  • Plenary: nvim-lua/plenary.nvim

• Color scheme (Adwaita)

  • Adwaita: Mofiqul/adwaita.nvim

• Useful plugins

  • vim-surround: tpope/vim-surround
  • ReplaceWithRegister: vim-scripts/ReplaceWithRegister
  • Comment: numToStr/Comment.nvim(toggle comments)

• File Explorer

  • nvim-tree: nvim-tree/nvim-tree.lua

• VSCode-like icons

  • nvim-web-devicons: kyazdani42/nvim-web-devicons

• Status bar

  • lualine: nvim-lualine/lualine.nvim

• Fuzzy finder

  • telescope-fzf-native: nvim-telescope/telescope-fzf-native.nvim
  • telescope.nvim: nvim-telescope/telescope.nvim

• Autocompletion

  • nvim-cmp: hrsh7th/nvim-cmp
  • cmp-buffer: hrsh7th/cmp-buffer
  • cmp-path: hrsh7th/cmp-path

• Managing language servers, linters and formatters

  • Mason: williamboman/mason.nvim

• Language server configuration

  • mason-lspconfig.nvim: williamboman/mason-lspconfig.nvim (bridges between mason and lspconfig)
  • nvim-lspconfig: neovim/nvim-lspconfig (easy way to configure LSPs)
  • cmp-nvim-lsp: hrsh7th/cmp-nvim-lsp (smart code autocomplete)
  • lspsaga.nvim: glepnir/lspsaga.nvim (enhanced UIs for LSP)
  • typescript.nvim: jose-elias-alvarez/typescript.nvim (Addl functions for TS server)
  • lspkind.nvim: onsails/lspkind.nvim (VSCode-like icons for autocompletion)

• Formatting and linting

  • null-ls.nvim: jose-elias-alvarez/null-ls.nvim (Simple method to config lsp servers and formatters)
  • mason-null-ls.nvim: jayp0521/mason-null-ls.nvim (Bridges mason and null-ls)

• Syntax highlighting, auto-closing

  • Treesitter: nvim-treesitter/nvim-treesitter
  • nvim-autopairs: windwp/nvim-autopairs
  • nvim-ts-autotag: windwp/nvim-ts-autotag

• TODO comment highlighting

  • todo-comments: travisvroman/todo-comments.nvim (A fork of the original that contains some improvements)

• Visual Debugger

  • nvim-dap: mfussenegger/nvim-dap
  • mason-nvim-dap: jay-babu/mason-nvim-dap.nvim (Bridges Mason and nvim-dap)
  • nvim-dap-ui: rcarriga/nvim-dap-ui (Debugger UI)

Configuration file layout

All config files will be located in ~/.config/nvim. UPDATED! This layout has been drastically simplified:

.
├── init.lua
├── lua
│   ├── travis
│   │   ├── dap_config.lua
│   └── plugins-setup.lua
├── plugin
│   └── packer_compiled.lua
        

Obviously, when setting this up you would want to replace my name with yours. init.lua contains all setup for things like keybindings, plugin-specific configuration, colourscheme, vim options, etc.. It also load all other lua files. plugins-setup.lua contains the bootstrapping for all plugins, whereas plugin/packer_compiled.lua contains the installed plugin data managed by packer.
Note that lua/travis/dap_config.lua contains DAP-specific configuration to easily turn this on/off because I'm on the fence about whether or not I will continue using it.

If you drop these files in place as-is, it *mostly* should work. I do suggest renaming the user folder name to your own, and any references found in the files to that name as well.

A public version of the files I use may be found here, where any sensitive data has been removed.

Visual Debugger setup (C/CPP specific)

Once all the above plugins are installed, make sure to visit this page for configuring nvim-dap for visual debugging of C code.

Quick usage highlights

Explorer window

With the explorer window selected, you can do the following in NORMAL mode:

• Opens/closes the explorer window
• aAdds a file or folder. To create a folder, ensure the name ends with a /.
• cCopies a file or folder.
• xCuts a file or folder.
• pPastes a file or folder.
• dRemoves a file or folder.

General Navigation Keybinds

In NORMAL mode, here are some bindings for basic navigation:
• SPACE ffOpens a fuzzy file finder (search by file name).
• SPACE fsOpens a fuzzy search for file content.
• SPACE fbOpens a fuzzy finder for currently open buffers.
• SPACE gdGoto Definition
• SPACE giGoto Implementation
• SPACE dsBrowse Document Symbols
• SPACE wsBrowse Workspace Symbols
• SPACE dwsBrowse Dynamic Workspace Symbols
• SPACE rnRename symbol
• SPACE svSplit Vertically
• SPACE shSplit Horizontally
• SPACE 1Sources nvim config file and installs plugins
• SPACE 2Opens nvim config file for editing.

Debugging Keybinds

In NORMAL mode, here are some keybindings for the visual debugger:
• F5Start/Continue application
• F9Toggle breakpoint on current line
• F10Step Over
• F11Step Into
• SHIFT+F11Step Out
• SHIFT+F5Terminate application/debugging
• SPACE dtToggle debugging UI (sometimes it doesn't close/open like it should)

Note that there is also something in there to disable the F1 keystroke for help, as I seemed to constantly hit this by accident and that was super annoying.

TODO

So far, this article has taken quite a lot of time to write. I'd like to continue this in more detail, but don't have the time at the moment. Be sure to check back at some point in the future, as I will be updating this from time to time.

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