Don't touch the default nvim installation; use a seperate config directory.

[2brownc]

Is your feature request related to a problem? Please describe.
Currently recommended installation method makes AstroNvim take over the nvim command.

Describe the solution you'd like
Use avim instead of taking over nvim. It's better if the default nvim installtion is left as it is while AstroVim has it's own runtime, config and cache directories.

Lunar Vim does exactly this. So even when AstroVim is installed it runs with no issue. Example script for Lunar Vim which is invoked by lvim:

#!/bin/sh

export LUNARVIM_RUNTIME_DIR="${LUNARVIM_RUNTIME_DIR:-"~/.local/share/lunarvim"}"
export LUNARVIM_CONFIG_DIR="${LUNARVIM_CONFIG_DIR:-"~/.config/lvim"}"
export LUNARVIM_CACHE_DIR="${LUNARVIM_CACHE_DIR:-"~/.cache/lvim"}"

exec nvim -u "$LUNARVIM_RUNTIME_DIR/lvim/init.lua" "$@"

Additional context
A different config directory is useful because some guis Neovim require config files in nvim directory. So if AstroVim has a different directory it can be updates without any extra steps as in recopying the file afterwards.

[mehalter]

This adds a layer of complexity to setting up AstroNvim for most users for a case I don't think is generally needed. I will definitely add this to the documentation though in the recipes section with detailed instructions on how to set this up and an example avim script that users can copy/paste and set up themselves. What do you think? As for the GUI compatibility, I think most users who use AstroNvim as well as a GUI based Neovim client want to use AstroNvim with their GUI client. Maybe we can add common GUI config files to our gitignore to help with this compatibility with the updater. Do you have any examples and I can add those files to not be tracked

[2brownc]

I will definitely add this to the documentation though in the recipes section with detailed instructions on how to set this up and an example avim script that users can copy/paste and set up themselves.

That's great!

Maybe we can add common GUI config files to our gitignore to help with this compatibility with the updater. Do you have any examples and I can add those files to not be tracked.

Good idea!

I use Neovim-qt and it uses the file ginit.vim.

[mehalter]

Awesome thanks, I'll take a look into this this upcoming week and check out some other GUI applications to get a decent list together. Thanks for the recommendation!