I have been using vim for a long time but never got to clean up and modernize my messy vim configuration. When I switched to neovim, I decided to configure it from scratch. And I failed terribly, at least, at my perfectionism.

So I decided to depend on the work and perfectionism of others and use a pre-configured neovim distribution. Kudos goes to AstroNvim. My flavor is added with this repository.

Installation

I did not write a fancy shell script, so you have to do all these steps manually. This is actually good, so you can review them and ask yourself if it is right to do so.

Step 1: requirements

Make sure these things are installed on your system:

• git
• tar
• curl
• C/C++ compiler with standard library

Step 2: recommended tools

For the best experience, make sure the stuff mentioned here is installed, especially fzf, rg, and xclip.

As Nerd Font, I am fond of the Hack Nerd Font. You might also want to check getnf.

LSP servers will be installed nvim-local on demand, however, some LSP servers need additional tools like node to be able to install them.

Step 3: get neovim

# create bin directory if it does not exist (we assume it exists in the PATH)
mkdir -p ~/.local/bin

# download nvim v0.9.0 (or replace the version by stable or latest) to a location in your $PATH
curl -L --output ~/.local/bin/nvim https://github.com/neovim/neovim/releases/download/v0.9.0/nvim.appimage

# make executable
chmod +x ~/.local/bin/nvim

# also override vim
ln -s ~/.local/bin/nvim ~/.local/bin/vim

Step 4: cleanup (skip if not necessary)

Move away old stuff because it could interfere with the new configuration.

test -d ~/.local/share/nvim && mv ~/.local/share/nvim ~/.local/share/nvim.bak-"$(date -I)"
test -d ~/.config/nvim && mv ~/.config/nvim ~/.config/nvim.bak-"$(date -I)"
test -d ~/.cache/nvim && mv ~/.cache/nvim ~/.cache/nvim.bak-"$(date -I)"

Step 5: get the configs

Do

git clone --branch v3.45.3 https://github.com/AstroNvim/AstroNvim.git ~/.config/nvim
git clone https://github.com/sbeyer/neovim-config.git ~/.config/nvim/lua/user
nvim

and you are set.

Step 6: afterwards

When editing code and some other files with specific syntax, type

:LspInstall

to select and install a corresponding LSP server.

LSP servers for, e.g., Rust and C/C++ will be installed automatically.

Type <leader>pm to get an overview of installed servers and interactively install/uninstall/upgrade LSP servers.

Note that treesitter parsers are installed automatically when necessary. You can type

:TSInstallInfo

to get an overview, and

:TSUpdate

upgrades all the installed parsers.

To upgrade AstroNvim, type <leader>pA and to upgrade plugins, type <leader>pU.