I tried Neovim Distributions so you don't have to

ever since the creation of Vim in 1992 by Bram molinar there have been countless attempts at packaging up Vim with configurations and libraries to give it a little more polish for me personally I remember using the Janice Vim distribution when I initially got into Vim about 10 years ago lately with the emergence of neovim and fancy new luab based libraries neovim distributions have gotten more and more interesting I personally don't use a Vim distribution but I am curious about them I guess you would say I'm drro curious there are however a lot of distributions out there so in this video I want to evaluate the four most popular distributions namely astrov lunar EnV Chad and lazy Vim now for each drro I'm going to use a very scientific rating and evaluation system where I cover four main criteria number one the general installation process what is the overall impression of the installation is it nice and simple command line that copies a GitHub Rebo to your config neovim directory or is it something more involved than that number two finding and figuring out commands how easy is it it to find or figure out the key bindings and commands of this distribution number three LSP on a Javascript file how quickly can I get LSP functionality working on a Javascript file that I have I'll be using the same Javascript file and doing the same functionality can the drro do what it's supposed to do with LSPs and number four extending the config by adding a custom plugin I have some favorite plugins I want to install on any config does the distribution allow this to happen easily or are there workarounds SL special syntax I will award points based on a hot dog scale each criteria can be awarded a total of one hot dog if a Dro has four hot dogs it's great one or two hot dogs eh not so much now before we get into the evaluations I just want to say one thing these are all amazing pieces of work done by incredible people and this is merely my personal take on each one all of these distributions are great and if you're interested I highly suggest you try each and every one they really are fantastic so without further Ado let's get into it first up is lunar Vim now I have to say I have heard of lunar Vim before but I never really checked it out so I'm excited to get into this one the general installation process lunar viim has the most unique installation process of all of these distributions you copy and paste a command line that runs A bash command to install the drro but the installation process has many steps which feels sophisticated and stable overall at the end you have a new special command you run instead of just running envm which is a little odd I guess you could just Alias envm to this new lvm command or you could put the dur in your path and run lvm forever whenever floats your boat I give this step a half hot dog number two finding and figuring out commands lunar Vim uses which key to display key bindings and commands if you can guess the first letter of a command it's pretty intuitive I have no quals here one hot dog next up LSP on a Javascript file there's no surprise that the LSP works great here lunar Vim uses Mason and I don't see any issues getting the LSP to work correctly we can see in the Javascript file we correctly use the LSP to do a code action and it's pretty good one hot dog and finally extending the config by adding a custom plugin despite how heavy lunar vimm feels when installing when it comes to adding a new plugin to your config it's actually really simple there is a special config.lua file that lazy will import automatically so you can just paste more lazy plugins here installing my favorite plugin oil. envm was fairly straightforward I just added a code snippet to my config.lua file reload vim and lazy automatically installs a plugin then it just kind of works the way I'd expect one hot dog overall I give lunar Vim three and a half hot dogs pretty good next Distribution on the list is AST Vim this is another one that I've heard of before but never really looked into so I'm excited to try this one out too let's start off with the general installation process Astro Vim has a really straightforward installation process in their docs you need to copy and paste a GitHub repo Link in your command line This installs the dot files on your machine in the typical neovim config directory then when you open neovim after the installation you will see lazy install all the default plugins for the drro once that's complete you see a couple popups notifying you that that the installation has been successful really nice and simple overall one hot dog for installation finding and figuring out commands astrov Vim uses which key to display key bindings and commands if you can guess the first letter of a command it's pretty intuitive so I have no qualms here one hot dog LSP on a Javascript file the LSP in astrov works great astrov uses Mason and I don't see any issues getting the LSP to work correctly I can easily perform the same LSP code action from the previous distribution and it works pretty much the same this is all great for me so I give this one hot dog extending the config by adding a custom plugin Astro has an interesting process for customizing your configuration they suggest you copy a template repository to your GitHub account then clone that repository to a special directory in your Astro config this feels a little heavy-handed to me but I get the idea by making a new template repo you have a consistent way to add your own plugins and you can manage your own plug-in configuration on top of Astro in your own repo pretty cool I followed the instructions to create a new repository but then I got lost and neovim sort of broke for me I can chalk that up to an issue on my local environment and I won't blame Astro here but since this tripped me up immediately I'm going on First Impressions so I'll give this section zero hot dogs sorry overall ASTM was extremely simple to set up had great default plugins and was a breeze to work with installing a custom plugin seems difficult but overall this Dro is really great I give it three hot dogs nice now it's time to move on to the sexy bad boy of the neovim dist world and V Chad I remember when this distribution burst on the scene not long ago amassing tons of GitHub stars and likes so I'm excited to check this out first off General installation process Envy Chad follows best practices and has a nice simple installation process you clone a GitHub repo to your neovim config directory then when you start neovim you see lazy installing a ton of packages after you're presented with a notes screen which is nice albeit a little demanding in tone jeez Envy Chad we get it overall great experience one hot dog find Bing and figuring out commands Envy Chad also uses which key to display key bindings and commands if you can guess the first letter of a command it's pretty intuitive no issues here one hot dog LSP on a Javascript file and V Chad once again works like all the other distributions with LSPs so I have no issues running the same code action on the same Javascript file as I did in previous dros this works great so you guessed it one hot dog extending the config by adding a custom plugin this is where NV Chad kind of loses me they have a very special way of adding plugins to your configuration where you have to declare a local Lua table with a special name in a special file this naming and file convention in theory will automatically be loaded by Lua and run however I had a tough time getting this to work and the docks weren't exactly crystal clear I'm sure with a little patience this isn't a problem but like I said I'm going off first impressions here so zero hot dogs please don't hurt me Chad overall NV Chad is really great the documentation is really nice the installation is clean and simple and the distribution has a great look and feel to it it also has a great set of default plugins customizing your config however feels tedious and seems to have a bit of a learning curve overall a really great Dro three hot dogs next up is lazy Vim which according to my scientific poll is everyone's favorite neovim distribution it's also created by folky the original author of The lazy. MVM plugin so I'm excited to try it out let's get into it General installation process lazy Vim has a nice easy installation process they follow the best practices and allow you to clone a repo in your config directory then you load neovim and like other dros you'll see lazy load all the plugins I feel like it would have been funny if the creator of lazy used something like I don't know Packer to manage plugins but either way great installation one hot dog finding and figuring out commands lazy Vim uses which key to display key bindings and commands so you guessed it this works great it's really intuitive one hot dog LSP on a JS file just like our other distributions lazy Works flawless L with javascript's TS server LSP I can call the same code action on the same file as I did with other dros and get the same result nice stuff one hot dog extending the config by adding a custom plugin lazy has by far the most straightforward path to adding new plugins you merely have to create a Lua file in the user directory this Lua file is automatically loaded by lazy so you just have to return a Lua table with any plugins you want to install I was easily able to install and use my beloved oil. envm no problem this is great one hot dog overall lazy is amazing and probably the best of the bunch I gave it four hot dogs as for the final tally you can see all these distributions roughly have the same score some got a hot dog removed for having a rough edge here and there but they're all amazing distributions also every distribution comes with a great default config including lazy witch key theme switchers Splash Pages great LSP configs and more honestly you'd be happy using any of these dros or you could you know create your own of them config from scratch if you're interested in that check out this video next and hey thanks nerds

Channel: typecraft

Views: 95,912

Keywords: vim, text editor, neovim, neovim configuration, lazyvim, astrovim, astro nvim, astro vim, nvchad, nvchad neovim, nvchad vim, neovim editor, neovim setup, neovim distributions, lazy vim, lazynvim, lazy nvim, lazy neovim, programming, programming tutorial, lunarvim, lunar vim, lunar neovim

Id: bbHtl0Pxzj8

Length: 9min 11sec (551 seconds)

Published: Wed Nov 08 2023