- General Info
- Requirements
- Installation
- Configuration
- Getting Started
- Plugins
- Plugin Information
- Screenshots
This guide has information relating to Linux/Ubuntu.
This is my personal NeoVim config that I use for a wide variety of things. This config is not meant for a specific purpose, but rather to cover a few different purposes that are specific to me as a Computer Science Major. The main uses for this configuration are:
- Making LaTeX Documents
- Coding in C/C++
- Coding in Rust
- (some) Front end Development
I am using Catppuccin Mocha as my main theme and for my LuaLine I use Cyberdream. For font, I use JetBrains Mono, but any Nerd Font will do.
- NeoVim version (v0.9.5) is required. The latest version is recommended (v0.10.0). I use the NeoVim appimage because it works on every distro.
# downloads NeoVim
curl -LO https://github.com/neovim/neovim/releases/latest/download/nvim.appimage
# give read+execute permissions to NeoVim
chmod 555 nvim.appimage
# add a NeoVim folder to the optional directory
mkdir -p /opt/nvim
# move the app image to the optional directory
mv nvim.appimage /opt/nvim/nvim
# add to .bashrc
export PATH="$PATH:/opt/nvim/"
- NodeJS
# installs NVM (Node Version Manager)
curl -o- https://raw.githubusercontent.com/nvm-sh/nvm/v0.39.7/install.sh | bash
# download Node.js version 20
nvm install 20
# download yarn
npm install --global yarn
# install the neovim package for NodeJS
npm install -g neovim
- Python/Pip
# Ubuntu comes with python but just in case
apt install python3
# Install pip
apt install python3-pip
# Use pip to install pynvim
pip3 install pynvim
- C/C++ Compiler
apt install build-essential
- RipGrep and fd for Telescope.nvim (Live Grep)
apt install ripgrep
apt install fd-find
- XClip for clipboard (Optional)
apt install xclip
For LaTeX live viewing to work with VimTex there are a few more dependencies needed. First is a PDF viewer that will update whenever we write to the file. I use Zathura for this purpose because it comes with Vim style motions out of the box. You can also customize Zathura to have the colorscheme of your choice. I am using Catppuccin Mocha.
- Zathura (Recommended)
apt install zathura
- latexmk: LaTeX Compiler
apt install texlive-full
- tree-sitter-cli: Allows for better syntax highlighting of LaTeX Documents
# NOTE: I used Cargo to download tree-sitter-cli. Should work with the Node Manager as well though.
npm install tree-sitter-cli
# OR
cargo install tree-sitter-cli
Before you start, enter the .config directory in the home directory.
Then clone the repository.
cd ~/.config
git clone https://github.com/EthanGilles/nvim.git
After cloning the repository, open up NeoVim. The Lazy plugin manager and its GUI should load and start downloading all of the plugina for the configuration. Once everything is downloaded, re-open NeoVim and the configuration should be loaded.
To get auto-completion support, see Conquer of Completion. You have to install certain Conquer of Completion (CoC) extensions to get auto complete for a language.
Plugins and Configuration are setup in their own folders within the lua directory. Keymaps are
found within keymaps.lua and Vim options are found in options.lua. Configuration for each plug-in
can be found within it's respective lua file. More Plugin Information.
Some of the options I have on that you might want to change are:
vim.opt.tabstop = 2 -- <TAB> goes two spaces instead of 4.
vim.opt.ignorecase = true -- Ignore capitalization in searches.
vim.opt.wrap = false -- Don't wrap text if it goes off the line.
vim.opt.number = true -- Show line numbers.
vim.opt.relativenumber = true -- Line numbers relative to cursor position.All the keymaps are listed under Keymaps. They can also be found within the
keymaps.lua file, where every keymap for this config is listed with its purpose commented around it.
To add a new keymap, it is the following syntax. In the first option, choose either "n", "v", or "i"
for executing the command in normal mode, visual mode, or insert mode.
keymap.set("[n, v, i]", "[keys to press]", ":[Vim cmd]<CR>", opts)My global <leader> key is set to SPACE.
If you would like to change the <leader> keymap, it is in the globals.lua file.
WIP
| Keymap | Description |
|---|---|
| leader>m | Switch cursor to file tree |
| leader>f | Toggle file tree |
| Keymap | Description |
|---|---|
| leader>s>v | Split pane vertically |
| leader>s>h | Split pane horizontaly |
| Ctrl+h | Move a pane left |
| Ctrl+j | Move down a pane |
| Ctrl+k | Move up a pane |
| Ctrl+l | Move a pane right |
| Keymap | Description |
|---|---|
| leader>n | Go to the next buffer |
| leader>p | Go to the previous buffer |
| leader>d | Delete the current buffer |
| leader>o | Open a new empty buffer |
| Keymap | Description |
|---|---|
| ENTER | Autocomplete with the current suggestion |
| TAB | Cycle to next auto-complete suggestion |
| SHIFT+TAB | Cycle to the previous auto-complete suggestion |
| Keymap | Description |
|---|---|
| leader>f>a | Open Telescope |
| leader>f>k | Use Telescope to fuzzy find keybindings |
| leader>f>f | Use Telescope to fuzzy find files |
| leader>f>g | Use Telescope to fuzzy find using live-grep |
| leader>f>b | Use Telescope to fuzzy find buffers |
| leader>f>r | Use Telescope to fuzzy find recent files |
| Ctrl+c | Close the Telescope window |
| Keymap | Description |
|---|---|
| leader>f>i | Fold ALL code by indent level |
| z>a | Unfold current code block |
| z>f | Fold current code (in visual mode) |
| Keymap | Description |
|---|---|
| leader>s>s | Save the current session |
| leader>s>r | Restore the previous session |
| Ctrl+s | Search sessions |
| Keymap | Description |
|---|---|
| leader>l>l | Start continous LaTeX compiler and PDF viewer |
| leader>l>c | Clean the current LaTeX directory |
| leader>l>e | Close the LaTeX error message window |
| leader>l>t | See a table of contents for your document |
| ]>] | Jump to the next section/subsection |
| [>[ | Jump to the previous section/subsection |
| Keymap | Description |
|---|---|
| Ctrl+/ | Comment out current line, or highlighted code |
| Ctrl+> | Shift highlighted code one indent to the right |
| Ctrl+< | Shift highlighted code one indent to the left |
| Ctrl+c | Clear the current search phrase |
| Shift+k | Show information for the item under the cursor |
| leader>t>o | Toggle the cursor to stay in the center, and not scroll off |
| leader>h>n | Hide line numbers |
| leader>s>n | Show line numbers |
| leader>s>c | Enable Spell Checking |
More plug-in specific keymaps can be found in the documentation for the plugin, found below.
- Alpha
- Auto Session
- Auto Pairs
- Catppuccin
- cmp-Ultisnips
- cmp
- cmp-lsp
- cmp-buffer
- cmp-path
- cmp-cmdline
- Colorizer
- Comment
- Cyberdream
- Highlighted Yank
- Indent-Blankline
- Lazy
- LSP Progress
- LSP Config
- LuaLine
- Mason LSP Config
- Mason
- Noice
- Nui
- nvim-tree
- nvim-treesitter
- nvim-web-devicons
- Plenary
- Smartcolumn
- Telescope
- Ultisnips
- Illuminate
- Vim-Snippets
- VimTex
All configuration for plugins are within their respective lua files. This is accomplished by making the configuration a lua function, and then calling that function for the config option.
An example is shown below with the plugin Colorizer
local config = function()
require ('colorizer').setup {
filetypes = {
'*'; -- Highlight all files.
},
}
end
return {
'NvChad/nvim-colorizer.lua',
lazy = false,
config = config,
}All of the plugin configuration is done in the following fashion, with a function controlling the configuration, within the plugin's lua file. This makes it easy to find options for each plugin. I use Telescope to search for plugins or keymaps wheenever I want to configure something.
- Alpha
- Auto Session
- Auto Pairs
- Catppuccin
- CMP
- Colorizer
- Comment
- Highlighted Yank
- Indent-Blankline
- LSP Progress
- Mason/LSP Config
- LuaLine
- Noice
- Nvim-tree
- Nvim-treesitter
- Telescope
- UltiSnips
- Illuminate
- VimTex
Alpha is the greeting screen plugin. Alpha is widely used and is extremely customizable.
The greeting screen is something I have pieced together from other people's setups mixed with some
of my own personal preferences. Alpha will appear whenever you just use the command vim with no specific file.
I have Alpha setup so that you can update all of your plugins from the greeting screen, with easy access
so there is no memorization of commands needed.
To edit the ASCII art, just copy paste into the area where the current logo is.
All of the buttons on the greeting screen can be customized too. For example, a button is defined as:
dashboard.button("e", " New file", ":ene <BAR> startinsert <CR>")Where the first argument is the hot-key, the second is the displayed text, and the third is the command to execute.
Currently, I have 9 buttons on the greeting screen. The options are
| Keymap | Option | Description |
|---|---|---|
| f | Find file | Use Telescope to look for files |
| g | Find word | Use Telescope to live grep through files |
| r | Recent files | Use Telescope to look through recent files |
| l | Lazy | Open Lazy plugin manager |
| m | Mason | Open Mason LSP package manager |
| u | Update Plugins | Update plugins through the Lazy plugin manager |
| p | Update Parsers | Update all the tree-sitter parsers |
| h | Check Health | Use the :checkhealth command to check dependencies |
| q | Quit NVIM | Close NeoVim |
Greeting:
Auto Pairs is a quality of life plufin that will pair together parenthesis, brackets, quotes, etc. that should be paired. It also auto moves the cursor to the right if you press a keystroke for a paired character. The reason this plugin is used is because it can be configured to auto-pair for LaTeX as well. This means that the '$' symbol is paired in only tex documents with the same functionality as other characters.
Auto Session is a quality of life plugin that lets you save all of your current windows and then restore them the next time you use NeoVim. Auto Session also auto-saves your session while you are working if you forget to save a session. Sessions are saved with their name being the current working directory.
There are a few keybinds associated with auto session that can be found here. When you are searching through sessions, here are a couple more keybinds to be aware of.
| Keymap | Description |
|---|---|
| Ctrl+d | Delete the highlighted session |
| Ctrl+s | Restore the previous session |
| ENTER | Restore the highlighted session |
| TAB | Highlight the next session in the list |
| SHIFT+TAB | Highlight the previous session in the list |
Catppuccin is the theme being used. There is some configuration that goes into the theme, like choosing whether you want the background to be transparent or not. I have also turned on integrations for other plugins being used in the configuration. The main reason I like using Catppuccin is because they have a theme for everything. I can have the same theme for my Terminal Emulator, NeoVim, and my PDF viewer, which is very aesthetically pleasing.
CMP is the auto-completion plugin being used. It uses another plugin to connect it to the native NeoVim LSPs for LSP auto completion, as well as snippet completion through UltiSnips. The combination of autocompletion from Language Servers and Snippets is extremely powerful.
It also provides auto completion for commands within Vim. When typing a command with ':' it will provide auto-completion suggestions just like when typing normally. It also will suggest different file paths for commands as well. For example, typing ':e' will give auto-completion suggestions for different files to edit.
To add new Language auto-completion see the Mason section.
Colorizer highlights color-codes with the color they are representing. Hexcodes, names, RGB values, etc. will be highlighted with its own color. A simple quality of life plugin.
Comment is used to group together and comment out code. The keymaps for this plugin
are set within the comment.lua file because they access the plugin's api. Currently,
commenting out the current line (in normal mode) and commenting out the highlighted lines in visual mode
are both set to Ctrl+/.
Highlighted Yank does exactly what the name states. It is a simple quality of life plugin that shows exactly what you just copied to the clipboard. It highlights the copied text to show you exactly what was copied. Something I would expect in any modern IDE.
Indent-Blankline will help with auto indenting the next line, and will give you different colors along the lefthand side of the editor for separate indenting levels. The colors can be customized by changing the hex values within the lua file.
The highlighting order is as follows, with RainbowRed coming first. To change the order,
simply arrange the variable names in the order you would like them to appear.
local highlight = {
"RainbowRed",
"RainbowBlue",
"RainbowYellow",
"RainbowViolet",
"RainbowOrange",
"RainbowGreen",
"RainbowCyan",
}To change the actual value, just change the hex value for the corresponding variable. For example, to change the first level indent color, modify the hex value from the line below. I have modified some of the colors to be brighter so I can clearly see tab levels.
vim.api.nvim_set_hl(0, "RainbowRed", { fg = "#FF79C6" })LSP Progress Shows the current LSP being used in the status line. This helps if there is a need for different LSPs with the same file extension. It also shows the progress of the LSP being loaded, if you have a large project.
In this photo you can see I'm using the Marksman LSP for creating a markdown file.
Mason Is the LSP Package manager being used for the configuration.
It allows for easy installation of new LSPs and easy Updating for current ones.
To see what LSPs are installed currently use the :Mason command. There is also access
to the Mason UI through the Alpha greeting screen
To add new LSPs to the configuration, there are several steps.
The first is to open the Mason UI and download the appropriate LSP. Then open the
lspconfig.lua file. There will be a configuration function that requires the setup
of all of the other pre-installed LSPs. To add the new one, add another line to the config using the following template,
replacing the LSP_NAME with the one installed.
require("lspconfig").LSP_NAME.setup{ on_attach = on_attach, capabilities = capabilities, }This will setup the LSP with the correct keybindings and auto-completion abilities.
LuaLine helps by giving you information on your NeoVim session. It gives information like the filetype, your git status, the files you have edited, OS, and more. Most NeoVim 'themes' come with a LuaLine theme as well. I use Cyberdream for my LuaLine theme, however, you can find more themes from LuaLine here
To change the theme, locate this code in the config and change the value for theme
require('lualine').setup {
options = {
theme = cyberdream,
globalstatus = true
},
}The rest of the LuaLine configuration is quite complicated, but it is setup to give lots of information on the current session, with custom icons. To learn more about customizing LuaLine, see their documentation.
The current LuaLine setup has: Buffers, Mode, CoC Diagnostics, git branch, modifications to the file, the time and date, OS, and file-format. I have the buffers in present in the at the top left where you would normally see tabs in an application.
And the Buffers are in the tab line
Noice makes things look, well, noice. It centers your command line and makes things look a lot better in general. I have disabled the notifications that Noice can provide. To enable them, you need a seperate plugin in the dependencies. However, getting notifications for writing to a file, executing commands, etc, is not something I was looking for.
Nvim-tree gives you a file explorer on the left side of the screen. With web-dev-icons the file explorer will also display icon types for each type of file, as well as git status.
It has a couple of configuration settings you might want to change, for example
view = {
width = 25, -- Changes the width of the window
},
renderer = {
group_empty = true, -- Will show folders even if they are empty
},
filters = {
dotfiles = false, -- Will not filter out dot files ('.bashrc', '.config', etc.)
},Nvim-treesitter gives better syntax highlighting for languages.
I disabled highlighting for LaTeX and BibTex because I was getting errors for the highlighting in LaTeX documents.
I have a list of languages that are installed automatically within the config. To add a new
language you can add it to the list shown below. All of the language servers can be updated on the Greeting screen or
by using :TSUpdate.
ensure_installed = {
"c",
"cpp",
"latex",
"bibtex",
"rust",
"html",
"css",
"javascript",
"python",
"bash", -- Needed for Noice
"markdown", -- Needed for Noice
"lua", -- Needed for Noice
"markdown_inline", -- Needed for Noice
"regex", -- Needed for Noice
"vim", -- Needed for Noice
},To remove a language, first remove it from the list above and then run the command :TSUninstall [language].
Telescope is the ultimate fuzzy finder for NeoVim. It integrates with Plenary to give you a fuzzy finder with a file previewer right in NeoVim.
| Keymaps for when the Telescope window is open | Description |
|---|---|
| ENTER | Open the selected file |
| Ctrl+j | Move down a selection in the menu |
| Ctrl+k | Move up a selection in the menu |
| SHIFT+TAB | Move down a selection in the menu |
| TAB | Move up a selection in the menu |
| ESC | Exit the Telescope menu |
Other keymaps for opening different Telescope windows can be found here
I am using UltiSnips for snippet completion. All of my personal snippets are in the UltiSnips folder. Currently, I only have snippets that I use for LaTeX. Most of the snippets I am using can be found here.
To add more snippets for LaTeX, find the tex.snippet file within the Ultisnips directory
and add another snippet. To add another snippet for a
different language, add a new file to the Ultisnips directory that has the file extension for
the language as the title of the file, with a '.snippets' extension.
The other snippets I have downloaded are from Vim-Snippets.
Illuminate is another quality of life plugin. It highlights all occurrances of the word that your cursor is currently on. It is especially useful for looking at variable names or object types.
VimTex is the perfect plugin for anyone wanting to edit LaTeX files in NeoVim. It allows for
continuous compiling of a '.tex' document. In my configuration, <leader>ll starts the continuous
compiler and viewer.
When compiling, the LaTeX compiler creates some junk files that can be cleaned up with <leader>lc as well.
The only configuration I have added in for VimTex is a command in the config to enable expression concealling. To disable it, delete or comment out the following lines from the config.
init = function()
vim.cmd[[set conceallevel=2]]
vim.cmd[[let g:tex_conceal='abdmg']]
end,VimTex comes with a ton of keybinds beyond the ones I covered in this guide, back in the LaTeX
section of the Keymaps. To explore more of them, check out the VimTex documentation, or :h VimTex.
