Vim Plugins

Plugins are extra modules you can install written by other people. Most of the time they are hosted opensource on Github/Gitlab. Thereā€™s a lot of plugin managers, so many, that often times youā€™ll see in the readme of a plugin: use your favorite plugin manager.

Below Iā€™ll go over my favorite plugin manager and plugins, plus some tips and tricks for them all.

vim-plug - a vim plugin manager

I use vim-plug to manage my vim plugins, because the syntax is pretty easy.

It puts your plugins into (on Linux/macOS): ā€˜~/.vim/pluggedā€™

Install plugins with vim-plug

Hereā€™s what you put in your .vimrc

" this is to start calling plugins
call plug#begin()
" you can put all your plugins below the call plug line

" indents lines and adds a line to show blocks of code
" downloads plugin from repo indentLine owned by Yggdroot
Plug 'Yggdroot/indentLine'

" plugins stop on this line
call plug#end()

Then you just run :PlugInstall when in vim and itā€™ll install everything in your .vimrc.

Uninstall plugins with vim-plug

First remove or comment out the plugin line from your .vimrc and then open up vim and run :PlugClean.

Plugins I use

General Plugins

vim-clap - a modern fuzzy searcher 

Plug 'liuchengxu/vim-clap'

NerdTree - directory tree expolorer

The thing that made NERDTree the best was that it integrates with vim-devicons, which adds NerdFonts with symbols so that you can see what kind of file or directory youā€™re looking at.

Itā€™s simple at its core, but complex enough that it has itā€™s own plugins, so Iā€™ll just give you all the related plugins I actually use. Hereā€™s the selection from my .vimrc vim-plug block:

" NerdTree - Tree explorer plugin - use :NERDTreeToggle to try it out
"          - after nerdtree is on visible, use ? for help

" On-demand loading of nerdtree
Plug 'scrooloose/nerdtree', { 'on':  'NERDTreeToggle' }

" syntax highlighing for nerdtree
Plug 'tiagofumo/vim-nerdtree-syntax-highlight'

" puts little glyphs for different file types
Plug 'ryanoasis/vim-devicons'

" add git awareness to see modified, merged, etc status of file in nerdtree
Plug 'Xuyuanp/nerdtree-git-plugin'

" END NerdTree

Once youā€™ve got it installed, while in vim, start typing :nerd and tab, and it will autocomplete to :NERDTreeToggle, which will bring up a file tree, that you can then navigate with j(down) and k(up), and then either:

  • hit return to either open directories
  • hit s to open a file side by side

vim-airline - a prettier status line for vim

vim-airline written entirely in vim script, and is a bit faster than powerlineā€™s implementation. You can also use themes with it.

Plug 'vim-airline/vim-airline'
Plug 'vim-airline/vim-airline-themes'

I still wanted it to match my powerline shell theme look and feel, so I did the following:

""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""
"                              Airline
"               A pure vim script status line for vim
""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""
" use powerline fonts
let g:airline_powerline_fonts = 1
" use softer colors
let g:airline_theme='murmur'
" changing separators to match personal powerline for shell
let g:airline_left_sep='īƒ† '
let g:airline_right_sep='īƒ‡'
" this is a smaller more consise final section
function! LinePercent()
    return line('.') * 100 / line('$') . '%'
endfunction
let g:airline_section_z = 'ī‚”:%l (%{LinePercent()}) ī‚£:%v'

Git plugins

vim-fugitive and vim-gitgutter

Both of these are git related plugins. I use these for different things. vim-fugitive is good for letting you run git commands from vim, while vim-gitgutter is great for showing you diff symbols in the left hand column for any changes that differ from your set origin branch.

" git plugin for running git commands with :git
Plug 'tpope/vim-fugitive'

" puts a git + or - in side line to show git changes in file
Plug 'airblade/vim-gitgutter'

I find them both great, but git-gutter was kind of ugly, and so I changed the symbols and colors to:

""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""
"                               vim-gitgutter
"  git gutter is a vim plugin that puts a symbol in a column before the line #
"  We need to do a little configuring to make it less ugly
""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""
" vim-gitgutter used to do this by default:
highlight! link SignColumn LineNr
" change sign color color
highlight SignColumn guibg=#1d1d1d ctermbg=black

" change the colors back to what they should be when there are changes
highlight GitGutterAdd    guifg=#009900 ctermfg=2
highlight GitGutterChange guifg=#bbbb00 ctermfg=3
highlight GitGutterDelete guifg=#ff2222 ctermfg=1

" use the nerdfont symbols instead of -,+
let g:gitgutter_sign_added = 'ļ‘—'
let g:gitgutter_sign_modified = 'ļ‘™'
let g:gitgutter_sign_removed = 'ļ‘˜'

Indentation, Syntaxhighlighting, and linting, oh my!

These sections are grouped together, because many plugins in any one of these categories overlap.

General Indentation 

" indents lines and adds a line to show blocks of code
Plug 'Yggdroot/indentLine'

YAML Syntax highlighting 

" yaml syntax highlighting better
Plug 'stephpy/vim-yaml'

Python support 

" python tab completion - I actually find this kind of annoying šŸ¤·
Plug 'davidhalter/jedi-vim'
" I don't actually remember what this does...
Plug 'python-mode/python-mode', { 'for': 'python'}

Bash support 

" bash tab completion
Plug 'WolfgangMehner/bash-support'

" linter - will use shellcheck for bash and highlight broken code
Plug 'dense-analysis/ale'

Limelight

For distraction free writing

Plug 'junegunn/limelight'

Kubernetes plugins

vim-kubernetes

Run k8s commands from vim.

" For the current buffer (including modifications not on disk)
" :KubeApply :KubeDelete :KubeCreate
" And for the current directory (read from disk)
" :KubeApplyDir :KubeDeleteDir
Plug 'andrewstuart/vim-kubernetes'

helm plugins

I like the of this one, but it breaks all my auto-indents and I dontā€™ know why, so itā€™s disabled right now:

" helm yaml specifically (includes go support) doesn't seem to work for
" auto-indenting, so it's off for now
" Plug 'towolf/vim-helm'

If you have a better solution, email me, please šŸ¤·