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Show HN: A Vim distribution inspired by Spacemacs

vim.liuchengxu.org

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Re: Show HN: A Vim distribution inspired by Spacemacs

#41

Post by bnolsen »

chongli wrote: post #11
z1mm32m4n wrote: post #7

In general, I think people really sell themselves short by using an editor "distribution." It's a "teach a man to fish" situation. The whole point of being able to configure Emacs or Vim is so that each person can make it into the tool he or she wants it to be. That's sort of why I recommend Vim as an IDE[1] to people. It teaches people how to configure Vim for themselves, so they can better understand how the pieces…

This is also why I decided to use Keith Bostic's nvi [0], also known as vi from BSD. I got so tired of endless configuring and bikeshedding my own editor instead of getting work done. Since I switched to nvi I've learned way more about the powerful features of the base editor as well as shell tools like grep, fzf, fmt, column, wc, expand, pdftotext, pandoc, make, git... With tmux I have easy access to any REPLs and m…

I've used "elvis" in the past as it has good syntax highlighting. I'm not seeing that as part of nvi's feature set.

Re: Show HN: A Vim distribution inspired by Spacemacs

#42

Post by yjftsjthsd-h »

Qwertious wrote: post #22
z1mm32m4n wrote: post #7

In general, I think people really sell themselves short by using an editor "distribution." It's a "teach a man to fish" situation. The whole point of being able to configure Emacs or Vim is so that each person can make it into the tool he or she wants it to be. That's sort of why I recommend Vim as an IDE[1] to people. It teaches people how to configure Vim for themselves, so they can better understand how the pieces…

Vanilla vim is like compiling - efficient, but with a huge upfront investment. A vim 'distribution is like JITing - you end up at roughly the same spot, but it actually lets you do the thing in the meanwhile.

I think this only works if we allow that JITing is harder to understand and improve, because distributions tend to be opaque.

Re: Show HN: A Vim distribution inspired by Spacemacs

#43

Post by dvcrn »

It is quite simple to add something similar to your existing setup. Just split your configurations into logical packages and include them from your main.

Here is for example my Go "layer": https://github.com/dvcrn/dotfiles/blob/master/vim/lang/go.vi...

The top is describing plugins, the middle configuration and the bottom key bindings, including "mode keys" accessible over comma.

Also shameless plug to "proton", my atom plugin which tries to do the same thing. https://github.com/dvcrn/proton

Re: Show HN: A Vim distribution inspired by Spacemacs

#44

Post by gorthol »

sdrothrock wrote: post #10
z1mm32m4n wrote: post #7

In general, I think people really sell themselves short by using an editor "distribution." It's a "teach a man to fish" situation. The whole point of being able to configure Emacs or Vim is so that each person can make it into the tool he or she wants it to be. That's sort of why I recommend Vim as an IDE[1] to people. It teaches people how to configure Vim for themselves, so they can better understand how the pieces…

One of the reasons I like vim is that I can find vim or vi almost anywhere I need to work, but I try not to configure it too much (and lose out on what people say is one of the greatest advantages) BECAUSE I work on so many servers... is there a solution other than "carry your config and plugins everywhere?"

Upload your vimrc file and .vim directory to github and just do a clone on every new server.

Re: Show HN: A Vim distribution inspired by Spacemacs

#45

Post by inlineint »

gorthol wrote: post #44
sdrothrock wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One of the reasons I like vim is that I can find vim or vi almost anywhere I need to work, but I try not to configure it too much (and lose out on what people say is one of the greatest advantages) BECAUSE I work on so many servers... is there a solution other than "carry your config and plugins everywhere?"

Upload your vimrc file and .vim directory to github and just do a clone on every new server.

I used this approach, but the problem with it is that all the plugins should be synced in it, so the repository becomes larger and larger with time, or kept as submodules what adds additional friction. Also you should manually copy .vimrc to your home directory from the cloned repository.

So I put to the repository only .vimrc and an short shell script install.sh that installs Vundle, .vimrc, and then installs all the plugins by running "PluginInstall" command in vim. Installation becomes just cloning the repo and running install.sh from it.

The additional benefit in comparison to say putting plugins to git submodules is that I don't have to keep my vim repository at GitHub up-to-date with latest plugins versions because Vundle anyway installs the freshest versions.

Re: Show HN: A Vim distribution inspired by Spacemacs

#46

Post by jmcdiesel »

liuchengxu wrote: post #4
winestock wrote: post #2

There's another distribution of Vim which also claims to be inspired by Spacemacs and is called SpaceVim (not space-vim as in this case). Homepage: http://spacevim.org/ Hacker News discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13315845

Thanks for the pointer. I do have seen that before. But I think it's not difficult to see the difference. First of all, they are maintained by different people with a distinct goal. SpaceVim is aiming to serve a counterpart to spacemacs, which more suitable for pure vimmers, I guess. However, space-vim is intended for switching between spacemacs and vim painlessly. I'm both a vimmer and spacemacs user, and I really l…

So you saw a previously existing library and literally just stepped all over its name confusingly? That's just plain rude.

Re: Show HN: A Vim distribution inspired by Spacemacs

#48

Post by liuchengxu »

jmcdiesel wrote: post #46
liuchengxu wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for the pointer. I do have seen that before. But I think it's not difficult to see the difference. First of all, they are maintained by different people with a distinct goal. SpaceVim is aiming to serve a counterpart to spacemacs, which more suitable for pure vimmers, I guess. However, space-vim is intended for switching between spacemacs and vim painlessly. I'm both a vimmer and spacemacs user, and I really l…

So you saw a previously existing library and literally just stepped all over its name confusingly? That's just plain rude.

I think you have a little misunderstanding here. Actually, space-vim is earlier than SpaceVim. You can check that.

Re: Show HN: A Vim distribution inspired by Spacemacs

#49

Post by vvillena »

pzone wrote: post #25
z1mm32m4n wrote: post #7

In general, I think people really sell themselves short by using an editor "distribution." It's a "teach a man to fish" situation. The whole point of being able to configure Emacs or Vim is so that each person can make it into the tool he or she wants it to be. That's sort of why I recommend Vim as an IDE[1] to people. It teaches people how to configure Vim for themselves, so they can better understand how the pieces…

You miss a major benefit: the ecosystems of these editors evolve very quickly. Packages are updated and broken regularly, adding new features and interoporability that you may not be able to learn about yourself. A community configuration like Spacemacs will continually update to provide you with a configuration that is up to date and doesn't break.

This is a tradeoff not everyone can afford to make. A clean Spacemacs installation right now brings in a broken org-mode that cannot do exports. Spacemacs needs version pinning and stable package channels.

Re: Show HN: A Vim distribution inspired by Spacemacs

#50

Post by sdrothrock »

gorthol wrote: post #44
sdrothrock wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One of the reasons I like vim is that I can find vim or vi almost anywhere I need to work, but I try not to configure it too much (and lose out on what people say is one of the greatest advantages) BECAUSE I work on so many servers... is there a solution other than "carry your config and plugins everywhere?"

Upload your vimrc file and .vim directory to github and just do a clone on every new server.

My point, which I didn't state clearly, is that there are situations where this isn't really feasible; secured networks, servers not on the internet, etc.
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