LunarVim Best Vim Config?

Mirza-Krnjic — Thu, 18 Aug 2022 13:00:30 +0000

Why NeoVim

Like many developers, while researching on ways to increase ones productivity as a developer I came across the world of VIM(NeoVim). Needless to say, those VimWizards left a great impression on me. They were able to do common programming tasks with lightning speed and precision and I knew NeoVim has to become part of my routine as well. I went through a phase of looking for the ideal development set of tools that would be convenient and enjoyable.

Neovim like Vim, is a very sophisticated tool that is extremely customizable but carries a steep learning curve. However, once you're past the basics and force yourself some muscle memory it is unbelievably fast. All the effort pays off massively.

On the downside Vim requires a significant up-front time investment in learning.
Also don't let the abundance of choice in customization options be distracting.

Pros of Vim(NeoVim):

Lighting fast.
Extremely configurable and customizable.
Massive ecosystem of plugins.
Cross-platform support.
Support for almost any programming language out there.
It is free and open source.

Installation

First of all VIM and NeoVIM are not the same!

Vim is a ubiquitous text editor that comes preinstalled with most major Linux distributions.
NeoVim is an enhanced upgrade to Vim that incorporates more features.

If you are new to the VIM universe I reccommend that you start your journey with a preconfigured neovim layer like LunarVim.

LunarVim takes advantage of the latest Neovim features such as Treesitter and Language Server Protocol support.
The installation process is straight forward. Instructions can be found here.

Tips for MacOS

LunarVim excepts to find NeoVim already preinstalled on your machine.

brew install neovim

You will need Rust and Cargo before you proceed with the LunarVim installation.

curl https://sh.rustup.rs -sSf | sh

Since most of the modern NeoVim configs are done in lua you will need to get it as well.

brew install lua

Fun part

After the installation of LunarVim you can start your personal exploration of the worlds fastest text editor.

config.lua

Most of your time customizing LunarVim will probably be spent in the config.lua file.
You can easily access if by opening LVim and pressing the (space) key followed by L and c.

You can set custom keybindings, override the default ones, add additional plugins and the list goes on.

Telescope

You plugin that you will find yourself using constantly is Telescope. It already comes pre-installed but has a few dependencies.

By pressing : you open command mode where you can type the following:

:checkhealth telescope

More about telescope can be found here

This was just a small preview of whats possible with the LunarVim config.

NeoVim can also be used with more popular test editors like VS Code with the VsCodeVim plugin.

DEV Community: Mirza-Krnjic

LunarVim Best Vim Config?