---
title: User's Guide for Vim in Nixpkgs
author: Peter Simons
date: 2016-06-25
---
# User's Guide to Vim Plugins/Addons/Bundles/Scripts in Nixpkgs
You'll get a vim(-your-suffix) in PATH also loading the plugins you want.
Loading can be deferred, see example
VAM (=vim-addon-manager) and Pathogen plugin managers are supported.
Vundle,NeoBundle could be your turn.
## dependencies by Vim plugins
VAM introduced .json files supporting dependencies without versioning
assuming that "using latest version" is ok most of the time.
## HOWTO
First create a vim-scripts file having one plugin name per line. Example:
"tlib"
{'name': 'vim-addon-sql'}
{'filetype_regex': '\%(vim)$', 'names': ['reload', 'vim-dev-plugin']}
Such vim-scripts file can be read by VAM as well like this:
call vam#Scripts(expand('~/.vim-scripts'), {})
Create a default.nix file:
{ nixpkgs ? import <nixpkgs> {}, compiler ? "ghc7102" }:
nixpkgs.vim_configurable.customize { name = "vim"; vimrcConfig.vam.pluginDictionaries = [ "vim-addon-vim2nix" ]; }
Create a generate.vim file:
ActivateAddons vim-addon-vim2nix
let vim_scripts = "vim-scripts"
call nix#ExportPluginsForNix({
\ 'path_to_nixpkgs': eval('{"'.substitute(substitute(substitute($NIX_PATH, ':', ',', 'g'), '=',':', 'g'), '\([:,]\)', '"\1"',"g").'"}')["nixpkgs"],
\ 'cache_file': '/tmp/vim2nix-cache',
\ 'try_catch': 0,
\ 'plugin_dictionaries': ["vim-addon-manager"]+map(readfile(vim_scripts), 'eval(v:val)')
\ })
Then run
nix-shell -p vimUtils.vim_with_vim2nix --command "vim -c 'source generate.vim'"
You should get a Vim buffer with the nix derivations (output1) and vam.pluginDictionaries (output2).
You can add your vim to your system's configuration file like this and start it by "vim-my":
my-vim =
let plugins = let inherit (vimUtils) buildVimPluginFrom2Nix; in {
copy paste output1 here
}; in vim_configurable.customize {
name = "vim-my";
vimrcConfig.vam.knownPlugins = plugins; # optional
vimrcConfig.vam.pluginDictionaries = [
copy paste output2 here
];
# Pathogen would be
# vimrcConfig.pathogen.knownPlugins = plugins; # plugins
# vimrcConfig.pathogen.pluginNames = ["tlib"];
};
Sample output1:
"reload" = buildVimPluginFrom2Nix { # created by nix#NixDerivation
name = "reload";
src = fetchgit {
url = "git://github.com/xolox/vim-reload";
rev = "0a601a668727f5b675cb1ddc19f6861f3f7ab9e1";
sha256 = "0vb832l9yxj919f5hfg6qj6bn9ni57gnjd3bj7zpq7d4iv2s4wdh";
};
dependencies = ["nim-misc"];
};
[...]
Sample output2:
[
''vim-addon-manager''
''tlib''
{ "name" = ''vim-addon-sql''; }
{ "filetype_regex" = ''\%(vim)$$''; "names" = [ ''reload'' ''vim-dev-plugin'' ]; }
]
## Important repositories
- [vim-pi](https://bitbucket.org/vimcommunity/vim-pi) is a plugin repository
from VAM plugin manager meant to be used by others as well used by
- [vim2nix](http://github.com/MarcWeber/vim-addon-vim2nix) which generates the
.nix code