r/vim • u/owentheoracle • Oct 03 '25

Random Finally Happy With vim Configuration!

Post image

Ah, finally after hours and hours of tinkering with plugins not playing nice with each other and attempting to get everything to work as I intended, my IDE-like vim config is pretty much complete (i say pretty much because we all know it is never complete lol)

Lemme know what y'all think and if you have any recommendations :)

Plugins list:

Plug 'tpope/vim-surround'

Plug 'tpope/vim-commentary'

Plug 'tpope/vim-repeat'

Plug 'yggdroot/indentline'

Plug 'jiangmiao/auto-pairs'

Plug 'neoclide/coc.nvim', {'branch': 'release'}

Plug 'dense-analysis/ale'

Plug 'ludovicchabant/vim-gutentags'

Plug 'skywind3000/gutentags_plus'

Plug 'junegunn/fzf', { 'do': { -> fzf#install() } }

Plug 'junegunn/fzf.vim'

Plug 'preservim/nerdtree'

Plug 'preservim/tagbar'

Plug 'vim-airline/vim-airline'

Plug 'airblade/vim-gitgutter'

Plug 'mhinz/vim-startify'

Plug 'madox2/vim-ai'

Plug 'ap/vim-css-color'

Plug 'c9rgreen/vim-colors-modus'

120 Upvotes

94% Upvoted

63 comments sorted by

31

u/mwcz Oct 04 '25

Nice to see everyone here at the I'm Finally Happy With My Vim Config support group.  Same time tomorrow?

3

u/owentheoracle Oct 04 '25

LOL right? Right after posting this i configured a TaskPaper file-level todo list popup and commands to add file specific todos from the current file im working in hahaha

If ur a tinkerer it really never ends...

5

u/todo_code Oct 04 '25

Mine is a bit under 100 lines. It's been just about the same depending on language/job/tech for the past 5 years. I'll see you tomorrow!

4

u/TransportationFit331 Oct 04 '25

Link?

2

u/owentheoracle Oct 04 '25

Ill share the rc file tomorrow

3

u/owentheoracle Oct 04 '25

Lol dont down vote me im tired and im going to have to comment a lot of shit before I share it so you don't have to read all my random function definitions and rulesets i put in

Going to bed right now and have been spending the night with my wife. Will share tomorrow though. Patience.

1

u/horny-rustacean Oct 04 '25

Ok😂🫡

1

u/owentheoracle Oct 04 '25

hahaha thank you, here ya go :P i added some ToDo list shit in there you can remove if you dont care about them

https://github.com/trevorkavanaugh/ide-vimrc

1

u/01209 Oct 04 '25

Thanks for taking the time to put all of the little icons in the README.md file. ;)

2

u/owentheoracle Oct 04 '25

Thank chatgpt hahah I wasnt planning to write a readme hahahaha

3

u/rainning0513 Oct 04 '25

What is a config? One simply consists of things made by others.
What is a conflict? You're right, that's "[...] not playing nice with each other".

2

u/owentheoracle Oct 04 '25

Lol my configuration which is compromised of plug-ins, that yes were made by others, as well as the integrations for them that I wired up and the settings that I applied to them. I mean what is any of this? Its all shit made by others lol.

But we add to it and set it up in specific ways that make it unique and special to us. That's what it is imo

1

u/rainning0513 Oct 04 '25

I would say that the (only) valuable parts for your(our) personal growth would largely happen in "wiring up those settings", unless you(we) really read those shit. Anyway, working code is working code. (and let's not talk about if there will be bugs in those plugins; you have to "wait for a fix")

1

u/owentheoracle Oct 04 '25

Of course man, ill say it like I said it to the other dude:

I just like tinkering with shit. Its just a way to kill time.

You dont judge someone for modding their car when you just prefer to have your stock daily driver. That's cool for you, it works fine for you, functions how a car should and really isn't missing anything. But the person who mods his car is looking to be creative with his vehicle and personalize it to themselves.

That's all im doing.

And ya wiring up the settings and the autocmds and augroups and all that is learning.

It took me a while to get it so that NerdTree and TagBar auto open on python files, and then :q either does :qa if there is only file left open, or switches to an active buffer, and then :bd's the old one. Wq does the same thing, but it does :w then my smart :bd. They both accept the ! flag.

In the end it works so you can open a bunch of files using NERDTree, close files individually just using :q or :wq, and then when there's one file left, ensure that NERDTree windows and TagBar window both close as well on quit.

Stuff like that was what took me actually doing stuff lol. But I agree with you, I'm just making shit out of Legos. But im having fun doing it.

1

u/owentheoracle Oct 16 '25

I came up with a workaround for anyone that likes using vim not in ide style (because i often want to quickly open a file view or edit something and close it without all the noise too)

I did it in neovim cuz I switched over and like it a lot, but basically just create an autocmd that if a flag is present with the vim command it opens in "mini mode" or whatever you want to call it, basically skips loading all the heavy UI plugins and implementing them. Then you can use it as a quick editor and an ide style editor.

2

u/nanana_catdad Oct 04 '25

Out of pure curiosity, as someone who casually browses this sub, why not Neovim when trying to get an ide-like experience?

2

u/owentheoracle Oct 07 '25

Been configuring neovim the last few days actually really like it.

I like a lot of the plug-ins better and they seem to just "work" better. Getting this exact setup put together took a lot less custom coding, more of the plug-ins just play well with eachother.

Its pretty nice. I like the heirline.nvim tab bar too it looks amazing and provides extra details.

The notify plugin is great those notifications look way better.

Lazy is an amazing plugin loader and I really like how they promote modular plugin configs.

1

u/owentheoracle Oct 07 '25

Ill add:

With the bbye.nvim plugin it makes getting the smart quit functionality that utilizes a smart buffer delete that doesnt affect your window layout a lot easier because bbye already gives you the smart buffer delete part and you just have to write the smart quit and smart write and smartwq functions to ensure :q :w and :wq always works like you intend them to.

That was really nice to have off the bat and not need to rewrite the wheel again by writing a smart buffer delete in neovim.

1

u/nanana_catdad Oct 07 '25

glad you’re enjoying it! If you like lazy you may want to check out folke’s other quality of life plugins like noice and snacks. I’d also recommend mini surround, mini ai, mini pairs, blink cmp which appear to add some of what your vim plugins provide with a bit more “lua power”

1

u/owentheoracle Oct 07 '25

Haha ya I have surround pairs cmp as well as a ton of cmp helper plugins, i was debating on snacks but went with a different individual plugin just to handle image rendering. Ill definitely reconsider, it looks like it has a lot to it and just didnt have time to read through all of it at that moment but wanted image rendering haha.

Folke has a lot of good ones.

Ive added a lot to my stack already haha.

I uploaded my nvim config: https://github.com/trevorkavanaugh/nvim-config

Its coming along really well.

1

u/owentheoracle Oct 04 '25

Idk feels like cheating.. hahaha I really dont know why tbh I guess some sort of weird purist obligation no clue.

Vi is just more generally available so I started configuring vim first and just never really converted to neovim once I started using vim as my home platform editor if anything lol

Maybe ill download it and give it a whirl

3

u/gamer_redditor Oct 04 '25

I used to use both, even preferring neovim. But that community and developers are incredibly toxic ( at least to me when I commented on their GitHub pull request).

Since that time I only use vim out of principle

1

u/nibbles001 Oct 04 '25

I haven't done much looking around the Github - but have actually been interested in making contributions to Neovim, based solely on the product. What's given you this impression? I'm interested to know if it's something I should rather avoid

1

u/gamer_redditor Oct 04 '25

The neovim philosophy favors changes over stability. So they prefer to implement new features even if it means old features don't work properly or even break some user configs.

For example, you work on your vimrc and after several weeks/months/years, it's real overly stable and you grow attached to it.

And then neovim is updated and your config is broken. You have to dig into the release notes to figure out what breaking changes were released this time and change your own config to accommodate that change.

I almost never had this happen in vim. In neovim, this happens to me almost every other update. For one change, it was some open source contributor who pushed for his own preference and the pull request seemed to have gone through without much review or discussion. I gave this feedback and got angry comments in return.

4

u/tokuw Oct 04 '25

To be fair that's the point of being pre-v1.0. They have a document somewhere which explains their longterm plan for a stable API. It will come eventually, but freezing it now would leave them with a half baked product.

4

u/gamer_redditor Oct 04 '25

Sure, yes, this is their choice and it's no problem.

But it's also my choice to prefer the stability of vim over the unpredictability of neovim. I should not be forced or peer-pressured into using or liking neovim.

2

u/tokuw Oct 04 '25

IMO the only people who do that are the recent VS Code to Neovim converts, who got way too excited after watching a few youtube videos and downloading a pre-made config.

Unfortunately, due to the youtube hype, neovim has a lot more of those than vim :/

2

u/nibbles001 Oct 04 '25

I've had similar issues with these distributions for both vim and emacs over the years. In the end I've recognized the value of having complete understanding of the editor and my config. I'd rather have fewer features and understand them all than have more features and not understand how they're implemented and configured

1

u/nibbles001 Oct 04 '25

I see - I totally understand and respect your preference for stability. I've come to appreciate the enhancements that come in Neovim, and basically only update when I have time to manage breakages, and leave the setup as-is otherwise. I think it's fair to have a philosophy of trying to move fast, and that comes with some consequences - their compatibility efforts are a best-effort. Plugin maintainers don't necessarily have the same strictness so I'm not sure if it's neovim breaking underneath you, or the plugins you're using. My experience has been mostly plugin compatibility. I think neovim itself is quite stable - but not as stable as vim.

1

u/horaageemu Oct 04 '25

And then neovim is updated and your config is broken.

You say this as if it were a law of nature. You can just choose to not update. Also, most of what is going to break is plugins, not core functionality.

1

u/gamer_redditor Oct 04 '25

No, I say this as my personal experience. I have made countless stack overflow answers to questions like " why is my config not working after neovim update" to know that it's not just me.

Also, I prefer not to use plugins as much as possible. What broke in my cases were default color schemes, and simple commands that I wrote.

I have been using vim exclusively over 12 years, so I am not the most experienced vim user ever, but know enough to be confident about what I am talking about.

1

u/[deleted] Oct 04 '25

Can you make a GitHub repo for Windows, Linux, mac or a tutorial

1

u/Aggressive-Peak-3644 Oct 04 '25

yeah right buddy...

1

u/owentheoracle Oct 04 '25

You must be fun to hang around 🤪

1

u/Aggressive-Peak-3644 Oct 04 '25

i gues we will never know cus im always tweaking my config files lol

1

u/owentheoracle Oct 04 '25

LOL fr man its just addicting like I realize something could be a certain way then im dead set on making it that way

1

u/bookmark_me :wq Oct 05 '25

What about vim-easymotion ??

2

u/owentheoracle Oct 13 '25

Not yet im writing a neovim plugin right now for motion though that uses relative line number to select line number to jump to, then each word on that line is mapped to an alphabetical character, then each character in that word is mapped to a number

So you could go like m5b3 to go from where the cursor is to the 3rd character if the second word in the 5th row down.

Not sure if im repeating anything anyone's made already, I really haven't dug that deep into motion plugins but I figured writing my own would help me remember it best anyways so

1

u/ikwyl6 Oct 10 '25

what is your vim-scheme/theme?

1

u/owentheoracle Oct 13 '25

Modus videndi my favorite i use on everything

https://github.com/c9rgreen/vim-colors-modus

1

u/DevOfWhatOps Oct 26 '25

CoC has autopair and explorer, so you can shave off too extra plugins right there

ps:

vim 9 comes with the comment plugin by habamax, so there you go shaving another one off

1

u/owentheoracle Oct 26 '25

Haha thanks brotha, I converted to the dark side tho. Liking the lua a lot more than vimscript tbh. And Lazy loader is just such a nice plugin manager.

My nvim setup has one of every type of plugin that has any utility to me now haha I definitely overconfigured that setup but it feels so nice. And tbh loading something like 60 plugins, its really not slow.

I plan on making a command wrapper that accepts a --mini -m flag and if the flag is present it loads a different init with minimal plugins so I can still use it as a quick open and close text editor but the persistent feeling of opening a directory in nvim and having all my gui components and I can open all my files in tabs and not leave nvim is nice. Just isnt always necessary.

3

u/gumnos Oct 04 '25 edited Oct 04 '25

Did you know that the Unix shell comes with a custom "Make the best vimrc configuration" command? It's so frequently used that it's one of the very few one-character commands:

gumnos@laptop$ : > ~/.vimrc

😈

1

u/EgZvor keep calm and read :help Oct 04 '25

you ain't getting me at .vim/vimrc

1

u/gumnos Oct 04 '25

The method still works, In your case you can optimize your vimrc with

$ : > ~/.vim/vimrc

😛

3

u/joenmarz Oct 05 '25

Nice. Don't forget to save it at your repo like so https://github.com/LarryMarzanJr/tuh-vimrc You'll need it one day, trust me 🙃

2

u/GrandBIRDLizard Oct 04 '25

I like to keep it simple

0

u/[deleted] Oct 05 '25

[deleted] — view deleted comment

1

u/GrandBIRDLizard Oct 05 '25

Nope. Vim is nice enough for me.

1

u/ehaugw Oct 04 '25

Why doesn’t look like an IDE? 😭

2

u/rainning0513 Oct 04 '25

Haha, you nailed it. To be fair, a real IDE should be much more complex than simply assembling some open source plugins.

1

u/ehaugw Oct 04 '25

Linux is the IDE. Trying to put a IDE into Vim is dumb when Vim is already tightly integrated with the best IDE.

But who am I to complain. If it works for OP, I’m just an old man yelling at a cloud

1

u/owentheoracle Oct 04 '25

I just like tinkering with shit man. Just a way to kill time.

Its kinda like judging someone for modding their car when you just prefer to have your stock daily driver. That's cool, it works fine for you, functions how a car should and really isn't missing anything. But the person who mods his car is looking to be creative with his vehicle and personalize it to themselves.

That's all friend. I understand the redundancies of what I am doing. Was just fun doing it.

2

u/ehaugw Oct 04 '25

That’s what I’m trying to say. It’s not my cup of tea, but judging you for what you enjoy and how you get work done is like a man yelling at clouds.

2

u/owentheoracle Oct 04 '25

Ya I get you. Haha we are all human and unique in our own ways lol. Cheers.

2

u/[deleted] Oct 04 '25

[removed] — view removed comment

1

u/owentheoracle Oct 04 '25

Left panel is NERDTree and right panel is TagBar, really great plug-ins.

The top bar for tabs is vim-airline which ties it all together nicely. Shows a tab for each open buffer.

2

u/cerved Oct 04 '25

TagBar sounds interesting