diff --git a/vim_native_pugins b/vim_native_pugins new file mode 100644 index 0000000..1a746d9 --- /dev/null +++ b/vim_native_pugins @@ -0,0 +1,46 @@ +Starting with vim 8.0, vim will automatically load plugins within a certain +directory sub-hive of the vim config directory. The default vim config dir +is ~/.vim/ Here's how it works: + +$mkdir -p ~/.vim/pack + +This will create the base location for the furthur directory structure of +your desired plugins. I say "further" here because now you should add +sub-directories at this location, with names which will describe groups of +related plugins. The simplest scenario would be to add just one directory +that will hold all the plugins you want vim to load when it starts up, +perhaps called "myplugins". + +mkdir -p ~/.vim/pack/myplugins + +vim will search through all the sub-dirs just below pack/ and process these +directory hives in its normal fashion for loading plugins. This means we now +need a new sub-directory below myplugins/ named "start", if we want any plugins +to auto-load. (and/or if we want to manually load plugins in vim, we would +create a new sub-dir named "opt") + +$ mkdir -p ~/.vim/pack/myplugins/start + +Once this is in place, you may now begin git cloning and/or downloading and +unzipping plugin directories you like into the start/ or opt/ directory. When +git starts, all the plugin directories in the start/ dir will be loaded. + +There is no facility in vim's native plugin support to update the plugins. +To do that, you would git pull or download/unzip in each specific plugin +subdirectory. Obviously, you could make the myplugins/ directory a git repo +and then manage that separately, giving you the possibility of simply cloning +that repo (or a copy of it, etc, etc) to the vim config dir in a home dir on +any machine. + +In my case, this can simply become a dir hive within my larger public "utils" +repo, allowing me to clone 'all my stuff' in one pull and then copy (or create +a script that copies for me) these things to the places they should go. Yet - +maybe its' best not to duplicate the plugin code within my utils repo. A +script could perform all the git clone and download/unzip operations at +run-time. + +Appendix A: Organizing The Groups of Plugins +Perhaps: one dir of plugins that are git-cloned vs another dir that are +downloaded and unzipped. Further, you could do this on a language-by-language +basis for plugins that are language specific, resulting in up to two dirs per +set of language-specific plugins.