How do I install a plugin in Vim/vi?

Question

How do I install a plugin in Vim?

Does it matter:

• Whether I use vi or Vim?
• Whether I use gVim?
• Which version of Vim I'm using?
• What my OS is?

Answer 1

To install a plugin, we need to know what form it comes in. It can be:

• a single .vim file
• a Vimball file
• a set of files in directories that follow an expected structure (plugin/*, syntax/*, etc.) (What makes a plugin Vundle compatible and are other plugin managers interchangeable?)

A single .vim file is supposed to be placed in the .vim/plugin directory.

A Vimball file can be installed by opening it in Vim and running :source %.

A set of files in the standard directory layout can be installed either by copying them to .vim, or using a plugin package manager.

Plugins may depend on certain features. Therefore:

• It may matter if you're using Vi or Vim,
• It may matter if you're using gVim or not (gVim typically has more features enabled at compile time than Vim on the same distribution).
• It may matter which version of Vim you're on, since a feature may have been added after your version of Vim.
• It may matter which OS you're on, especially if the plugin calls in external commands.

For most plugins, though, it may not matter.

Answer 2

vim-plug

I like to use the vim-plug plugin manager.

The problem with manually installing a plugin is that it's rather difficult to remove a plugin; you often have several different files in different directories, you have to manually find them & remove them.

Upgrading problems is similarly difficult: What if autoload/old-name.vim gets renamed to autoload/new-name.vim? You now have both an old and new version of a plugin.

vim-plug solves this by storing each plugin in it's own directory; it also includes command to easily install/remove a plugin, so you don't have to muck about with unzipping plugins and the like.

A key advantage of vim-plug over Pathogen is that vim-plug allows you to install and remove plugins more easily. All that Pathogen does is allow each plugin to be in a separate contained directory.

vim-plug relies on git; for MS Windows, you want msysgit.

You can define plugins in your vimrc like so:

call plug#begin('~/.vim/plugged')

" For MS Windows, this is probably better:
"call plug#begin('~/vimfiles/plugged')

Plug 'embear/vim-localvimrc'
Plug 'kchmck/vim-coffee-script'
" ... etc

call plug#end()

Then restart Vim, and then install plugins with:

:PlugInstall

This will put the plugins in ~/.vim/plugged or $HOME\vimfiles\plugged for MS Windows.

You can add this snippet from the FAQ to your vimrc file before the plug#begin() call:

if empty(glob('~/.vim/autoload/plug.vim'))
  silent !curl -fLo ~/.vim/autoload/plug.vim --create-dirs
    \ https://raw.githubusercontent.com/junegunn/vim-plug/master/plug.vim
  autocmd VimEnter * PlugInstall
endif

Note you need curl for this to work. This is almost always available on Linux and OSX, but not on MS Windows; so this trick won't work there...

To remove a plugin, remove it from the vimrc file and run:

:PlugClean

Note that vim-plug doesn't support installing scripts from the Vim scripts website, but those scripts are mirrored on GitHub, so there's no need to do so.

There are also some additional advantages to this such as easier updating of plugin, and on-demand loading for better performance. You can also easily copy your vimrc to another computer, run :PlugInstall, and have all your plugins.

Note there are more plugin managers; I happen to use vim-plug. See also: What is the difference between the vim package managers?

Answer 3

Vim 8+ / Neovim

Version 8 introduces a new packages mechanism that largely replaces the need for existing plugin managers (pathogen, vim-plug, vundle, etc.) at the time of writing (2017).

From the documentation:

A Vim package is a directory that contains one or more plugins

A package directory contains two sub-directories:

• start/ - contains plugins that will be automatically loaded
• opt/ - contains plugins that are loaded on demand with :packadd

It may seem a bit complicated, but in practice all you have to do is add your plugin here:

                 ↓ package name
~/ .vim / pack / bundle / start / some-plugin
          ↑ packages dir          ↑ plugin dir

On Windows: use ~\vimfiles\pack\ instead of ~/.vim/pack/

By convention, we've used the package name "bundle" as the directory that will contain all our plugins. You can use any name you want, and you can even put your plugins in separate package directories if you really want to.

Example: Installing sensible.vim

mkdir -p ~/.vim/pack/bundle/start
cd ~/.vim/pack/bundle/start
git clone https://github.com/tpope/vim-sensible.git

On Windows: use ~\vimfiles\pack\ instead of ~/.vim/pack/

Next time you start Vim, the plugin will load automatically.

Answer 4

Pathogen

Pathogen is a runtime path manager, which loads plugins within Vim. It makes plugin installation simple; here's how it works:

note: If you're using Windows, replace ~/.vim with $HOME\vimfiles.

1. Copy pathogen.vim to ~/.vim/autoload/pathogen.vim.

2. Create the ~/.vim/bundle directory, if it does not exist already.

3. Add the following line to the very beginning of your .vimrc:

   execute pathogen#infect()
   

4. You're done! When you want to add a plugin, simply copy the entire plugin's directory to ~/.vim/bundle, or git clone it there. For example:

   cd ~/.vim/bundle
   git clone https://github.com/tpope/vim-surround
   

5. * Caveat: If your plugin comes in the form of a .vim file, it won't work with Pathogen. Copy it to ~/.vim/plugin instead (you may have to create this directory if it doesn't exist).

Answer 5

Let us not forget the great & mighty Vundle!

Vundle is a complete plugin manager, with functionality for:

• Searching for plugins (using :PluginSearch)
• Installing plugins (using :PluginInstall)
• Updating plugins (using :PluginUpdate)
• Managing the plugin load path in the .vimrc (simply comment out plugin entries you don't want to load)
• Removing plugins you no longer want (using :PluginClean)

As you can see, it's a lot like the vim-plug manager mentioned by Carpetsmoker. I don't know which one came first, but their APIs look very similar to me, as does the setup process.

Answer 6

Most likely, your plugin will be a single .vim file.

If this is the case, I searched the help and experimented and figured out the following. From within vim (command mode), type:

:set runtimepath

This will show you a series of directories. Some of these directories will have a plugin subdirectory. Putting any .vim file in one of these plugin subdirectories will get it automatically loaded when you start vim from anywhere.

For me, on Ubuntu linux, I found that /usr/share/vim/vim74/plugin worked well, to install for all users. You may need root permission to copy a file to here (prefix your cp or mv command with sudo).

Answer 7

Vire leverages the latest pack format to install plugins and supports Vim and Neovim. You don't need to know where anything goes. Just provide a vimrc and Vire will take care of the rest.