vimfiles

Windows Vim 8 configuration files based on the recommendations of Ruslan Osipov, Keep Your vimrc file clean and The musings of bluz71.

:help vimrc recommends moving vimrc and gvimrc to vimfiles to make the setup more portable.

Installation

Several applications are assumed to be in the PATH, install
git-scm and select
User Git and optional Unix tools from the Windows Command Prompt.
See steps to add a local bin directory for
the other applications referenced in the vim configuration files.

Install Vim on Windows Subsystem for Linux

On Debian derivatives, like Ubuntu, the
dotfiles
repository provides an installation script for a compatible version of Vim with
GTK3. It also links ~/.vim/ to Windows $USERPROFILE/vimfiles/ to share
configuration across environments.

Install Vim on Windows

Vim-win32-installer
includes python3/dyn currently linked to Python 3.8. Download and install
or use chocolatey: choco install vim.

vimfiles installation

If you are not using WSL, to install in Unix based systems:

# Clone will fail if .local/ does not exist.
git clone https://github.com/jfishe/vimfiles.git $HOME/.local/vimfiles
ln -s $HOME/.local/vimfiles/vimfiles $HOME/.vim
cd $HOME/.local/vimfiles
git submodule update --init --recursive

To install in Windows:

# Clone vimfiles into LOCALAPPDATA
Set-Location -Path "$env:LOCALAPPDATA"
git clone https://github.com/jfishe/vimfiles.git vimfiles
Set-Location -Path .\vimfiles
git submodule update --init --recursive

$vimfiles = "$env:LOCALAPPDATA\vimfiles"
$dotfiles = Get-ChildItem -Path "$vimfiles\.*"

# Backup old configuration, if needed. Mklink will fail if Target exists.
Set-Location -Path "~"
mkdir .\old
Move-Item -Path .\vimfiles -Destination .\old
$dotfiles | ForEach-Object {
    $item = $_.name
    Move-Item -Path .\$($item) -Destination .\old -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue
}

# Link vimfiles and dotfiles to USERPROFILE
Set-Location -Path "~"
cmd /c "mklink /J .\vimfiles $vimfiles\vimfiles"
$dotfiles | ForEach-Object {
    $item = $_.name
    if ($_.PSIsContainer) {
      cmd /c "mklink /J .\$item $_"
    } else {
      # Use hardlink if symlink does not work.
      # cmd /c "mklink /H .\$item $_"
      cmd /c "mklink .\$item $_"
    }
}

Windows Environment

On Windows systems %HOMEDRIVE%%HOMEPATH%, e.g., U:\. may point to a
different path than %USERPROFILE%—i.e., C:\Users\<user name>.
git-scm defaults to %HOMEDRIVE%%HOMEPATH%. Defining %HOME%, overrides
this behavior.

  1. Open Control Panel.
  2. Search for environment.
  3. Select Edit environment variables for your account
  4. Select New.
  5. Variable name: HOME
  6. Variable value: %USERPROFILE%
  7. Select OK.
  8. Select Path and Edit.
  9. Select New and enter %USERPROFILE%\bin.
  10. Select OK, twice.
  11. Open git-bash or git-cmd and confirm directory is C:\Users\<user name>.

Windows Python Version

On Windows python3/dyn may point to a later version of python than conda
supports in the base environment. Copy or update gvim.bat. The usual
locations are:

  • %LOCALAPPDATA%\Microsoft\WindowsApps\gvim.bat
  • %WINDIR%\gvim.bat

Adding a call to conda and creating a Start-Menu shortcut can resolve the
issue, e.g:

Installing with chocolatey will clobber the Vim batch files because it
replaces any it finds in $env:WINDIR and
$env:LOCALAPPDATA\Microsoft\WindowsApps. The following snippet ensures the
batch files are in $env:LOCALAPPDATA\Microsoft\WindowsApps and calls a Vim
function to activate a compatible conda envirionment.
See Anaconda and Miniconda for installation
instructions.

# Create python38 environment if it does not exist.
Set-Location "$env:LOCALAPPDATA\vimfiles"
Get-Item .\environment.yml -ErrorAction Stop

if (-not (conda env list | Select-String -Pattern 'python38' -CaseSensitive)) {
  conda env create --file environment.yml
}

$userappdir = Get-Item $env:LOCALAPPDATA\Microsoft\WindowsApps
$globalappdir = Get-Item $env:WINDIR


$uservimcmd = Join-Path $userappdir '*vim*' | Get-ChildItem
$globalvimcmd = Join-Path $globalappdir '*vim*' | Get-ChildItem

if (-not $uservimcmd -and $globalvimcmd) {
  foreach ($item in $globalvimcmd) {
    Copy-Item $_ $userappdir
  }

& vim -c 'call condaactivate#AddConda2Vim() | :qa'

Anaconda and Miniconda

Install Miniconda or Anaconda per the directions in the
Anaconda Documentation.

Windows 10 includes a python executable in
$env:LOCALAPPDATA/Microsoft/WindowsApps/, which interferes with
[Conquer of Completion (CoC)]. Remove python.exe and python3.exe or run one
of them to install Python 3 from the Microsoft Store.

environment.yml lists the conda and pip packages
needed for the Vim configuration.

To add packages to the conda environment for use by Vim:

# Update conda. The installer is typically out of date.
conda update -n base -c defaults conda

# Initialize conda for the various shells on the computer
conda init

# Create a python38 environment compatible with the installed version of Vim.
$File = $env:LOCALAPPDATA\vimfiles\environment.yml
conda env create --file $File

# Periodically update the base and python38 environments.
conda update -n base -c defaults conda
conda update -n python38 --all

Windows Registry

Vim's install.exe tries to add right-click menus to explorer, but usually
fails, even when installing with administrator rights.
~\vim\vim82\GvimExt64\GvimExt.reg provides an example but assumes the dll
and executable are in the PATH. GvimExt.reg provides a
working version, assuming vim is installed in %USERPROFILE%.

The following will request administrator permission and add the contents of
GvimExt.reg to the Window Registry. Validate the file against the version
included with Vim.

regedit /S GvimExt.reg

Thesaurus

Setup instructions are included in vimrc to install the
Moby Thesaurus List by Grady Ward from
Project Gutenberg. Use a browser; the site blocks scripted download.

Dictionary

Refer to :help dictionary and download or symlink
dictionary/words. See below for symlink instrucitons.

On Windows 10, you can symlink to a dictionary in a WSL 1 Distro. It may work
with WSL 2.

  1. If needed, use the default WSL to install the dictionary. It should symlink
    to /usr/share/dict/words, which vimfiles/vimrc assumes
    for non-Windows platforms.
  2. Adjust the path below, as needed. Windows does resolve nested symlinks, so
    use the resolved path to the dictionary.
  3. Replace <distro_name> with the default WSL distro, e.g., WLinux,
    Ubuntu, etc.
# Assume default WSL is a Debian derivative
bash -c "sudo apt-get update"
bash -c "sudo apt-get install wamerican-huge"

# Assume dictionary path matches Debian.
# Not needed if using Linux Vim
cmd /c 'mklink words "\\wsl$\<distro_name>\usr\share\dict\american-english"'

grepprg and grepformat

ripgrep should be installed with
chocolatey or conda.

choco install ripgrep

conda activate python38
conda install ripgrep

Gutentags & Universal ctags

Conquer of Completion (CoC)

Conquer of Completion does not depend
on the python compiled with Vim. It supports Node.js modules that perform the
linting functions of ALE.

The script after/plugin/coc.vim installs extensions using
g:coc_global_extensions. Install CoC under opt instead of start to allow
disabling when node.js is unavailable.

# for vim8
mkdir -p ~/.vim/pack/coc/opt
cd ~/.vim/pack/coc/opt
curl --fail -L \
  https://github.com/neoclide/coc.nvim/archive/release.tar.gz | tar xzfv -

Asynchronous Lint Engine (ALE)

The Asynchronous Lint Engine supports
various linting (ALELint) and formatting (ALEFix) tools. Many of these are
Node.js packages. See jfishe/ALE_Nodejs
for a list and installation instructions. Others, such as black can be
installed by conda or pip. See environment.yml for a list.

Jupyter Notebook

git configuration

nbdime is configured by:

pip install nbdime
nbdime config-git --enable --global

Default Browser

The default browser on Windows 7 and 10 needs to remain IE/Edge to avoid
conflicts with various applications. ~/.jupyter/jupyter_notebook_config.py is
modified to specify Chrome as the notebook and lab browser since IE is not
compatible with notebook v. 5.

Windows Setup

Console

Download the latest release of ColorTool and extract into the PATH, e.g.,
~/bin. Include the schemes directory and add any additional schemes, as
desired. Create a hard-link mklink /h from ~/bin/schemes to each of the
.itermcolors files in $env:PROFILE directory.

New schemes may be tested and exported to iTerm2 format with
terminal.sexy.

Setup Python Project

cookiecutter cookiecutter-pypackage

Change to the pypackage directory you created and make initial commit to source
control.

git init
git add .
git commit -m "Initial project scaffold"
git status

virtualenv env
# Use env/bin/activate on Linux
env\Scripts\activate
pip install -e .

Git

ElateralLtd git commit template
provides a template and installation script for standard git commit messages.

The Vim that ships with Git-bash can use the same profile as Gvim. Using WSL
bash is the easiest method to create soft-links. Git-bash won't and recommends
using mklink, but mklink usually has complex ACL issues, especially in
a corporate environment. PowerShell and CMD do not recognize soft-linked
directories so use mklink /J LINK TARGET.

The following assumes that git-bash has been configured to use %USERPROFILE%
as home, which may be different than the default %HOMEDRIVE%%HOMEPATH%. Also,
Documents could be My Documents. Adjust the path for actual location of
vimfiles and vimwiki. The vim startup script assumes that for anything,
except Windows cmd.exe, that these files are located in $HOME. Soft-links
allow pointing to the actual location.

New-Item -ItemType Directory -Path $env:USERPROFILE\.config
cmd /c "mklink /J %USERPROFILE%\.vim %LOCALAPPDATA%\vimfiles\vimfiles"
cmd /c "mklink /J %USERPROFILE%\.config\mintty %LOCALAPPDATA%\vimfiles\mintty"
cmd /c "mklink /J %USERPROFILE%\vimwiki %USERPROFILE%\Documents\vimwiki"

Git Hooks

Tim Pope's Effortless Ctags with Git
shows how to rebuild Ctags with git hooks. Note they do not work under
PowerShell or CMD but do not seem to cause problems either. To work under WSL:

ln -s /mnt/c/Users/fishe/AppData/Local/vimfiles/.git_template ~/.git_template

To make hooks available from Windows, if you have any .bat or .ps1 hooks:

cmd /c "mklink /J $env:USERPROFILE\.git_template $env:LOCALAPPDATA\vimfiles\.git_template"

The Case for Pull Rebase

The Case for Pull Rebase
recommends avoiding merge commits, except when they're useful, such as for Pull
Request merges.

git pull --rebase|-r # Normal to avoid merge commits.
git pull --rebase=preserve # When local merge commit preserved, like Pull Request.
git config --global pull.rebase preserve

# if you're on Git 2.18 or later
git pull --rebase=merges
git config --global pull.rebase merges

Git diff for Excel Files

Xltrail suggested
3 steps to make Spreadsheet Compare work with git diff.
The proposed DOS batch script does not work with Microsoft Office 2016 because
spreadsheetcompare is not an installed application. Install a modified version,
which uses AppVLP.exe, as follows:

cmd /c "mklink $env:USERPROFILE\bin\xldiff.bat $env:LOCALAPPDATA\vimfiles\xldiff.bat"

.gitconfig defines [diff "excel"] and .gitattributes_global sets
diff=excel for all Excel file extensions. The batch script pauses git so that
it does not delete any temporary files it creates. Press <Enter> in the shell
after exiting spreadsheetcompare.

KeePass2, KeeAgent and SSH

KeeAgent
(for KeePass) on Bash on Windows / WSL provides a howto. Git-bash only requires
export SSH_AUTH_SOCK=~/keeagent_msys.socket in .bash_profile, depending on
the KeeAgent settings in KeePass2.

Map Caps Lock to Escape, or any key to any key

On Windows install PowerToys or Uncap.

Install PowerToys

  • choco install powertoys
  • Open PowerToys Settings application.
  • In Keyboard Manager, map Caps Lock to Esc.

Install Uncap

susam uncap. The repository contains
additional instructions.

vimfiles Update

Install the plugins in the Git repository.

git pull
git submodule update --init --recursive
vim -c 'packloadall | helptags ALL | qa'

Update to the latest versions and commit the changes, if any.

git submodule update --init --recursive --remote
vim -c 'packloadall | helptags ALL | qa'
git commit -am "chore: update submodules"
git push

GitHub

https://github.com/jfishe/vimfiles