Vim 9.0 • Hacker News Board

Re: Vim 9.0

#201

Post by OJFord » Fri, Jul 01, 2022, 7:39 AM UTC

johncoltrane wrote: post #191

moelf wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean: https://github.com/vim/vim/graphs/contributors https://github.com/neovim/neovim/graphs/contributors technically yes (by others too), but relatively, it's basically a one-man project

Vim has had a long life before being moved to GitHub and it still isn't developed the GitHub way anyway, so those graphs are meaningless. Here are contributor lists I've gathered a few years ago from `:help versionX.txt`: https://gist.github.com/romainl/7b17317cc26a30116e51a3759022... That's 600+ non-Bram contributors up to the fork that the Neovim team made disappear from their project when they removed the relevant…

You mean 'the git way', all GitHub's doing is looking at commit authors (different from commit committers).

A checked in file with a list of names is not the way to record that, I don't blame Neovim for removing it since that's basically useless anyway.

Re: Vim 9.0

#202

Post by petepete » Fri, Jul 01, 2022, 7:39 AM UTC

jonaustin wrote: post #115

wruza wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My opinion must be marginal, but in my view neovim community took an IDE route anyway so maybe it is a good thing if they separate, provided there is a way to switch. Because when you have a function in bigpkg.tgz, no incentive exists to dedicate a smaller package to it, and that changes the entire landscape dramatically and may create political issues in it. I actually liked simple little plugins vim had back in the…

Worth noting that one of the 5 listed NeoVim Non-Goals is "Turn Vim into an IDE" https://neovim.io/charter/

One of the neovim devs released a video just a couple of days ago on the topic.

He suggests neovim (and vim, emacs etc) fall into a category between text editor and IDE.

The term he uses is PDE (personalised development environment). In short, you have lots of power to customise your setup; you can give it some IDE-like behaviour but the way you do it tends to be by making personal choices of plugins and config.

It's not just a text editor, it's definitely not 'integrated'. I'm inclined to agree with him.

https://youtu.be/QMVIJhC9Veg

Re: Vim 9.0

#203

Post by slgeorge » Fri, Jul 01, 2022, 7:41 AM UTC

kzrdude wrote: post #85

deadbunny wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And when Bram did finally add async support rather than take the neovim work and us that he did it in a specifically non compatible way. I don't know the ins and outs but as an observer that does come across as a little petty.

We're used to open projects but Bram's seems to be that he wants to be in control, he's the main author. So Vim is then open source but not a completely open project.

That's pithy but a characterisation that misses many important aspects.

Bram's been developing Vim for 30 years [0]. Just think about that for a second. An open source project that's been running for longer than the age of probably 50% of the readership on hackers news. It's ways of working and values have been developed over a long period of time.

Vim favours being available on multiple platforms, alignment with Unix tradition and stability:

> Vim is a highly configurable text editor built to enable efficient text editing. It is an improved version of the vi editor distributed with most UNIX systems. (https://www.vim.org/about.php)

Neovim is built by people who value fullness of features, who see multi-platform as 'legacy platforms' and are happy to break backwards compatiblity for the value of making something more complete by contemporary standards.

The easiest summary is - Bram's comparison is Vi, Neovim teams' comparison is VS Code.

I love many of the NeoVim's new features and capabilities.

But, I think it's possible to like Neovim while also understanding the positive value of Vim and why their approach is different. There's something in the human condition about turning everything into a winner and loser, a hero or a villain - but it's just not true.

As a project that's been running for 30 years Bram and that community have an approach that they are comfortable with. There's a way of working, and a rhythm to the project that has worked over the long-term. They're evaluation of changes is against their own internal values - those values are different to the people that are working on Neovim. Personally, to me 30 years of effort and contribution to providing something totally free is unbelievable.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vim_(text_editor)

Re: Vim 9.0

#204

Post by idoubtit » Fri, Jul 01, 2022, 7:46 AM UTC

mgbmtl wrote: post #114

the_duke wrote: post #3

I'm curious how many users are now using vim versus neovim. I switched a few years ago,and ever since Lua plugin support the Neovim ecosystem is thriving.

Debian popcon can be interesting: - https://qa.debian.org/popcon.php?package=vim - https://qa.debian.org/popcon.php?package=neovim - https://qa.debian.org/popcon.php?package=nano (nano for the control group) So lots of neovim growth, but still small in absolute numbers. Then again, vim-tiny is installed by default. Normal vim is a better indicator. And it won't grow as much, because Debian's userbase grows slowly. Pe…

For those who don't want to parse the Debian popcon graphs :

    94000 installs for vim
     4000 installs for neovim

Exact values are 94171=81618+5727+6826 for vim + vim-gtk3 + vim-nox, and 3980 for neovim. I ignored vim-tiny, which is installed by default.

Re: Vim 9.0

#205

Post by usrbinbash » Fri, Jul 01, 2022, 7:47 AM UTC

givemeethekeys wrote: post #4

I'm curious: - How deep a rabbit hole do most people go down when setting up their vim / neovim environment? Apart from setting up a preferred color and language specific tab spacing and highlighting, I don't need more, but I've seen some pretty fancy setups. Out of the different plugins, which would you never operate without?

.vimrc currently sitting at about 275 lines (including whitespace and comments). A big chunk of that came with the terminal integration, as I'm using `term_sendkeys` heavily.

Re: Vim 9.0

#206

Post by qalmakka » Fri, Jul 01, 2022, 7:47 AM UTC

californical wrote: post #173

layer8 wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

…by the Stackoverflow crowd.

Yeah I feel like this definitely skews the results. I’m experienced enough to nearly never use StackOverflow, and also experienced enough to want to use something robust and readily available (try to find a system that doesn’t have vim), so I stick with vim and am _incredibly_ happy with it. Add in that StackOverflow is mostly a tool used by more junior web developers, and I think you’ll see that other demographics (…

> try to find a system that doesn’t have vim

Lots of embedded and BSD systems only have old vi, not vim, out of the box though.

Re: Vim 9.0

#207

Post by xigoi » Fri, Jul 01, 2022, 7:48 AM UTC

oblio wrote: post #83

azangru wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Arrays start at 1?

Just like in math, and Lua doesn't do manual memory management so aligning stuff with memory addresses is not needed. They're both valid options and it's just about preference.

Indexing starts at 1 in math mostly because in history, people were afraid of 0, and it's hard to change conventions.

Re: Vim 9.0

#208

Post by dspillett » Fri, Jul 01, 2022, 7:49 AM UTC

kelnos wrote: post #145

margarina72 wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

open source mean the source is a open (and few other points described in [0]). Vim licence [1] is GPL compatible. It is fully open source. Open source does not mean the maintainer is under the obligation to add features, or integrate PRs. [0]: https://opensource.org/osd [1]: https://www.gnu.org/licenses/vim-license.txt

I think you mistake the parent's point. Vim's code is certainly open source (I don't think anyone disputes that), but its development model is not the one we've come to be comfortable with. Moolenar maintains an iron grip on vim, and controls what goes in (and what doesn't) much more strictly than many other open source projects. That is certainly his prerogative, but it's also the prerogative of others to not like t…

> but its development model is not the one we've come to be comfortable with

"Open source not open contribution" is increasingly seen, and people don't seem to mind, and the attitude described with regard to vim development seem less "thanks, bit no thanks" than that, so I don't imagine any majority have an issue with it.

If I finally get around to making and releasing some stuff I plan, "not open contribution" is where I'll be. These things are my toys, they'll go my way, though the source is there so feel free to fork if you need/want something I'm not planning to do or not planning to do soon enough (I'll even link to your efforts so people wanting the same know where to find it). Unless you want to pay for my time to maintain and support your feature going forward, of course!

Re: Vim 9.0

#209

Post by OJFord » Fri, Jul 01, 2022, 7:51 AM UTC

u801e wrote: post #157

deadbunny wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have vim use the clipboard by default, with that said I still use the mouse to copy stuff now and then.

Depending on your OS, you could use visual line mode and highlight the text you want to copy. Then you can run: ' w !xclip -selection clipboard to copy the text to your clipboard. Macs have another program that works similar to xclip, but I don't remember what it's called.

> Macs have another program that works similar to xclip, but I don't remember what it's called.

pbcopy

While I'm here, on Wayland substitute wl-copy (or whatever you use).

Re: Vim 9.0

#210

Post by capableweb » Fri, Jul 01, 2022, 7:53 AM UTC

kelnos wrote: post #145

margarina72 wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

open source mean the source is a open (and few other points described in [0]). Vim licence [1] is GPL compatible. It is fully open source. Open source does not mean the maintainer is under the obligation to add features, or integrate PRs. [0]: https://opensource.org/osd [1]: https://www.gnu.org/licenses/vim-license.txt

I think you mistake the parent's point. Vim's code is certainly open source (I don't think anyone disputes that), but its development model is not the one we've come to be comfortable with. Moolenar maintains an iron grip on vim, and controls what goes in (and what doesn't) much more strictly than many other open source projects. That is certainly his prerogative, but it's also the prerogative of others to not like t…

Give a read to "The Cathedral and the Bazaar" and subsequent essay "Homesteading the Noosphere". They'll give an overview of different software designs, including the management of building those designs, in a open source/free software context.

Both development models are OK, and plenty of people are comfortable with both. I'd actually argue that most early/not-"modern" FOSS software have had the model of "you're welcome to contribute, but we ultimately own the codebase and therefore decides what goes in. If you're unhappy, feel free to fork", and it's not until lately, that some projects have decided to merge almost whatever people contribute.

Some projects even go as far as giving people direct write-access as soon as someone has got a PR merged, but I don't think that's very common, neither is the "merge without strict review" model you seem to referring to.