Robin Gagnon

Posted on Sep 18, 2020

Show and tell: Show off your vim setup 🚀

#discuss #beginners #vim #productivity

Hey DEV!

I was inspired by the post about vscode setups, so I decided to create this one.

I would love to see what the vim users of the DEV community use the most from color schemes, plugins, workflows, etc.

Starting with mine:

Check out the dotfiles. (Use as a reference only, it is not yet documented ☹️)

Color scheme

I use iceberg.vim, made by the great designer cocopon.

Check out cocopon's work!

Plugins

I don't use many plugins, but 3 are vital right now to my workflow:

fzf
- Fuzzy find a file by its name
- Search for text in all files
- Quickly switch between open vim buffers
coc.nvim
- autocompletion for many languages through extensions
vim-fugitive
- Resolve conflicts
- Stage changes line by line

Outside vim

tmux to manage terminal panes
typewritten, a minimal async zsh prompt

Share your own! 🚀

Top comments (49)

David Cantrell • Sep 21 '20 • Edited

Wow, some of those make mine look really garish!

My config: github.com/DrHyde/configurations/t...

Robin Gagnon • Sep 22 '20

Looks old school I like it!

David Cantrell • Sep 22 '20

Yeah, I've not really fiddled with the colours much, apart from tweaking them a bit to work better in Dark Mode.

But that's not old school. Old school is green on black in a tiny dumb terminal. I don't miss that.

Robin Gagnon • Sep 22 '20

Good point!

Emilie Ma • Sep 18 '20

Recently switched from VSCode. A pretty minimal setup - a fork of vim-code-dark to be greyscale, COC, Emmet.vim, and some other things I can't quite remember now.

Robin Gagnon • Sep 18 '20 • Edited

Amazing!

Have you always used greyscale color schemes?
Why did you start to do it and how was the transition?

Emilie Ma • Sep 18 '20

Thanks!

I definitely haven't always used greyscale schemes - this was mostly one of those 'huh let's try it' type things where I felt that vim-code-dark was a bit too bright compared to the rest of my setup. I just started to learn how to tweak schemes, and I find it's enough contrast for me, so that's fine. The transition wasn't as jarring as I thought (VSCode / vim-code-dark colours are quite pastel or desaturated already), and it was quite seamless in my opinion.

That said, some of my friends can't fathom how I can live 'without the contrast', but if you look at the colours long enough, a pastel blue vs a pastel grey looks about the same :)

Robin Gagnon • Sep 18 '20

Cool! Definitely going on my to-try list

Kevin Alemán • Sep 19 '20

I recommend that kind of color scheme. It's really pleasant for the eyes to see all in grayscale.
Personally, when using VSCode I use Verdandi theme. In VIM, I haven't found a greyscale scheme. Could you share with me the name of the color scheme you're using? :D thanks!

Robin Gagnon • Sep 19 '20

Emilie mentioned using a fork of vim-code-dark. Maybe you can find it on the linked GitHub account.

If not, the only greyscale color scheme for vim I know is jaredgorski/fogbell.vim

Emilie Ma • Sep 19 '20

Fogbell was something I investigated as well, but I found it didn't have enough levels of contrast and the highlighting groups were a bit off for me.

There's a whole collection of greyscale (or minimal color) themes at mcchrish/vim-no-color-collection that you might like to also check out.

My personal edit's not on GitHub yet, but I've just uploaded the vim file to this gist if you'd like to check it out, Kevin :)

Kevin Alemán • Sep 20 '20

I've found sunbather on that list. I like it. I guess I'll start using it. Currently, I use Iceberg.vim but it already bored me.
This is a screenshot of the sunbather. Lovely

Emilie Ma • Sep 20 '20

Looks cool - has an extra pop of colour that I might look into as well!

George C. G. Barbosa • Sep 18 '20

I think nothing different from what people already use here:

coc for completion
fzf to find files and jump into definitions
vim solarized theme
vim signify and fugitive for git
rainbow parenthesis and indent line

Outside of vim I also use tmux and zsh with starship too.

Robin Gagnon • Sep 18 '20

Our setups really are similar!

Is it just me or tmux messes up your vim colors? I have definitely had problems with that in the past.

Khalid Williams • Sep 19 '20

Launching tmux with the -2 flag solves the issue for me!

Anthony Sutton • Sep 18 '20

Theme: AYU Vim
Font: MonoLisa

DotFiles

Robin Gagnon • Sep 18 '20

AYU looks nice!

Anthony Sutton • Sep 18 '20

I go back and forth between AYU and gruvbox.. just depends what I feel like using. Just switched last week. Usually keep for about 2 - 3 months.

Dian Fay • Sep 18 '20

gitlab.com/dmfay/dotfiles

Colors are mine; too many plugins to list, but shoutout to denite.

Robin Gagnon • Sep 18 '20

Love the low-contrast color scheme! Does it only live in your gitlab dotfiles?

I didn't know about denite. I understand the plugin is quite generic and lets you do many things. What sort of stuff do you do with it?

Dian Fay • Sep 18 '20 • Edited

Yeah, I haven't published it anywhere else. The contrast is actually decent (at least at full size), it passes WCAG AA and only starts to fail on AAA!

I use three main bindings for denite, which cover the same things you use fzf for:

<C-p>: fuzzy find filenames, like CtrlP etc
<space>s: the same, but only for buffers I currently have open
<space>/: grep

Denite farms out the searching to ripgrep though.

Jordan Kicklighter • Sep 19 '20

Not sharing a setup, but curious from anyone around here mentioning COC: how is LSP integration in Vim? Curious about JS/TS, VueJS, Ruby, and any other languages people have tried. The tooling is one of the reasons I stick with VS Code.

Robin Gagnon • Sep 19 '20

I will agree with Justin that vim + coc is just as good at LSP than vscode.

It uses extensions for languages so you add the ones you work with and they get loaded when a file of that language opens.

There are extensions for all the languages you listed so you should be golden.

Good luck!

Justin Ho • Sep 19 '20

I've used VS Code and I think coc is just as good at LSP for JS, React snippets and C# (only languages I've been using since switch).

In addition it's the most familiar since the eslint and prettier plugins gives you the same warnings and formatting as you would running the linter/ formatter in cmd.

The biggest hurdle is to learn how to use vim though.

Jordan Kicklighter • Sep 19 '20

I'm very comfortable with Vim, and I use the plugin in vs code. I'd go back to Vim if these plugins make the experience similar. Thanks for the feedback

Justin Ho • Sep 19 '20

Sorry I didn't mean to imply you don't know how to use vim.

I meant that I'm not even that comfortable with vim and still need to remind myself to not hold down 'j' and use the line numbers 😅

Jordan Kicklighter • Sep 19 '20

Oh no, I didn't take it that way! Just clarifying that the Vim part is what I want in my life, but the other features are keeping me in VS Code.

And don't worry, I've been using Vim for years and still catch myself holding down j. Then I catch it, move back up, and use a line number to reinforce the better habits.

Ganjar Gingin Tahyudin • Sep 19 '20

how to can debug some go/js/python/ruby projects in vim/nvim ? i just confused because of that ...

Anirudh Rowjee • Sep 18 '20 • Edited

here we go!

off the top of my head -

Gruvbox Dark
Coc.nvim
Airline

my dotfiles exist here.

Robin Gagnon • Sep 18 '20

Gotta love the good old gruvbox!

Anirudh Rowjee • Sep 18 '20

I used to change color schemes every month before I found gruvbox.. and since then, it's been a year or more since I found a color scheme I like as much.

James Carr • Sep 18 '20 • Edited

Sure, here's my current one:

NeoVim with some of my plugins:

dracula theme
coc-python
Airline
ALE
autopairs
vim-fugitive
fzf
fzf-checkout

Tmux:

Also using dracula theme
zsh, oh-my-zsh *starship for the killer prompt

Robin Gagnon • Sep 18 '20

Nice setup!

Is ALE displaying the warnings and errors in the gutter? I've always wanted to integrate ALE to my setup.

James Carr • Sep 21 '20

Yep! Here's my config for it:

let g:ale_fixers = {
      \   'python': [
      \       'black',
      \       'isort'
      \   ],
      \}
let g:ale_fix_on_save = 1

let g:ale_sign_error = '❌'
let g:ale_sign_warning = '⚠️'

function! LinterStatus() abort
  let l:counts = ale#statusline#Count(bufnr(''))

  let l:all_errors = l:counts.error + l:counts.style_error
  let l:all_non_errors = l:counts.total - l:all_errors

  return l:counts.total == 0 ? '? all good ?' : printf(
        \   '?? %dW %dE',
        \   all_non_errors,
        \   all_errors
        \)
endfunction

set statusline=
set statusline+=%m
set statusline+=\ %f
set statusline+=%=
set statusline+=\ %{LinterStatus()}

Heiker • Sep 18 '20

Theme: rubber-enhanced
Font: The default Debian gives you.

Some interesting plugins I use:

fzf.vim - Fuzzy Finder
nnn.vim - File manager
emmet - Awesome snippets for html
vim-sneak - Move around the screen
quick-scope - Enhanced f
Nuake - A helper to toggle a terminal buffer

Here are the dotfiles.

Robin Gagnon • Sep 19 '20

I had never heard of quick-scope. Super cool, I’m gonna have to try it!

Cason Adams • Sep 19 '20

I always keep coming back to good ole gruvbox.
I just recently switched from skim to use fzf because it is more mature.
As others I am using neovim with coc works really well with rust, python, bash
tmux is awesome to have command line and vi at the same time with gitmux
loving Alacritty for my terminal and JetBrains as the font

dotfiles

Frans Allen • Sep 19 '20

currently, this theme is my favorite

my .vimrc

set ts=2 sw=2 cc=80 expandtab number noswapfile
colorscheme delek

Robin Gagnon • Sep 19 '20

Minimalism goals

Justin Ho • Sep 19 '20

Nord theme all the way! Using Alacritty terminal and hoping to get around to cleaning up my dotfiles soon, its too messy to show the world.

Neovim:

Coc
fzf
ripgrep
vim-multiple-cursors these are most used, the rest I could go without but too lazy to take out

Tmux:

tmux-sensible
tmux-ressurect

Zsh:

powerlevel10k prompt

Robin Gagnon • Sep 19 '20

If everything was perfect, life would be sad. Don't hesitate to share the messy stuff! 😬

Justin Ho • Sep 19 '20

Thanks for the encouragement!

Yes that is true, I still have old code I'm not proud of public on my GitHub 😂

Peter Benjamin (they/them) • Aug 25 '21 • Edited

My setup is very minimal to allow for simplicity and portability across wide range of development environments I use frequently (e.g. local machines, remote servers, raspberry pi's, docker containers) without compromising productivity.

Vim

Default colorscheme. Rely on terminal emulator for colors or just use black/white in some environments.
No plugins, but important features are implemented.
vim-unimpaired features
vim-fugitive features
Build and test results are pattern matched against :h 'errorformat' to load errors into vim's quickfix list. Also, show signs in signcolumn, like ale & sytantic plugins.
FZF repo ships with basic vim function definitions that are leveraged
vim-rooter feature

Tmux

Again, little to no plugins, but important features are implemented.
window/pane controls
status bar settings
fzf-url to launch URLs in tmux pane/window without the mouse or manual copy/paste
Custom project launcher to launch new tmux windows directly in the root of repositories.

Git

A number of custom git subcommands
For example, vim-fugitive's :Gbrowse (i.e. opening a repo, file, and line number on github/gitlab) is here: git browse <filename> <starting line> <ending line>
Remote Containers from VSCode is here: git devcontainer

Shell

Bash shell. Not a lot of customization. .bash_prompt only shows user, hostname, current working directory, git branch & status info, aws context, kubernetes context, and background jobs.
Limit dependencies on CLIs that need to be installed directly on localhost to: fzf, git, curl, docker, make. Everything else should be runnable via docker
Bash functions for kubectl and searching the web