Neovim: how I configure my colorschemes

This is nothing crazy, but I like the pattern and guess someone might like it too.

I decided I wanted to separate editor config from individual plugin configuration. Editor config (e.g. which colorscheme to use) should be in a config file, and how to use/config that colorscheme should stay in a separate config.

So, I wrote this file under lua/user/config.lua:

-- lua/user/config.lua

return {
    colorscheme = "nightfox",
    variant = "carbonfox",
    filemanager = "mini.files", -- supported: mini.files, oil
    startup = {
        show_diagnostics = true,
        show_git_blame = false,
    },
}

It's pretty straight-forward, huh?

Next steps was to write indidividual colorscheme configurations.

For each colorscheme I defined a file inside lua/user/colorschemes/ with the individual plugin config.

Here's how I configured nightfox, as an example:

-- lua/user/plugins/colorschemes/nightfox.lua

local config = require("user.config")
local utils = require("user.utils")

local M = {
    "EdenEast/nightfox.nvim",
    lazy = false,
    priority = 1000,
}

M.supported_variants = { "carbonfox", "dawnfox", "dayfox", "duskfox", "nightfox", "nordfox", "terafox" }
M.default_variant = "nightfox"

M.variant = function()
    if not utils.contains(M.supported_variants, config.variant) then
        vim.notify("Variant " .. config.variant .. " not supported, defaulting to " .. M.default_variant)
    end

    return (config.variant or M.default_variant)
end

M.config = function()
    if config.colorscheme ~= "nightfox" then
        return false
    end

    vim.o.termguicolors = true
    vim.o.cursorline = true
    vim.o.cursorlineopt = "number"

    require("nightfox").setup({
        options = {
            styles = {
                comments = "italic",
            },
            colorblind = {
                enable = true,
                simulate_only = false,
                severity = {
                    protan = 0.3,
                    deutan = 0.4,
                    tritan = 0.3,
                },
            },
            groups = {
                nightfox = {
                    ["@symbol"] = "palette.orange",
                },
            },
        },
    })

    local setup = [[
       colorscheme @variant@

         highlight link @symbol String
         highlight link @boolean @variable.builtin
         highlight clear CursorLineNr
         highlight link CursorLineNr String
         highlight clear VertSplit
         highlight link VertSplit String
     ]]

    vim.cmd(string.gsub(setup, "@variant@", M.variant()))
end

return M

What's happening here?

• I defined some simple functions to help choosing a variant (M.variant(), M.supported_variants() and M.default_variant());
• I defined the usual M.config() function for lazy.nvim. The interesting parts are:
  • the early exit (return false) in the first part of the function allows me to replicate this loading mechanism for all the colorschemes I have set up, but only load the one that's been specified in the config.colorscheme variable;
  • the rest of the file is usual stuff - colorscheme setup and some additional highlights to match my preferences.

This way - if I want to change the colorscheme being used at startup - I can edit the config.lua file without touching the rest of the config.

Adding a new colorscheme is as simple as adding a new file under lua/user/colorschemes/, write some boilerplate code to make it work, and voila, it works.

To see the whole config, here's the link to my dots:

• dot-files/nvim