Builtin package manager for plugins

[tamis-laan]

It would be so nice if neovim came with a build in package manager. Currently I'm using vim-plug but this has to be installed before my vimrc works.

https://github.com/junegunn/vim-plug

[ObserverOfTime]

Packages are built-in and you can use git submodules to manage them if you don't want to install a plugin for it.

[justinmk]

Problem

1. Currently users must look for a plugin manager and figure out how to install it.
   • Nvim documentation should be able to give a one-liner to install (non-builtin) plugin managers and plugins.
2. Lack of a declarative way to specify plugins.
   • Lets Nvim reason about dependency ordering / transitivity.
   • Lets crawlers build a package index.
   • packspec adds potential to leverage NPM tooling (and possibly infrastructure).

Goals

These problems are in-scope (everything else is out of scope):

1. Include a minimal builtin plugin manager.
   • Users shouldn't need to look for a plugin manager online and install it.
   • Users can easily install another plugin manager with a one-liner.
2. Must be minimal. One file, 500-1000 lines of code.
   • If users want advanced features they must install an advanced plugin manager.
3. Supports packspec (declarative way to fetch plugins) + hooks.
   • Need to finish the packspec story... https://github.com/neovim/packspec/
   • Define a convention for hooks:
     • post-install: one-time, just after a plugin is installed.
     • pre-activate: per-session, just before a plugin is loaded/required.
     • post-activate
4. "Provider" model: other plugin managers can provide plugin management (:packinstall, vim.plugins(), etc/whatever).
5. Future goals (not required for initial implementation):
   1. Nvim should be able to list plugins from a plugin index like https://dotfyle.com/neovim/plugins/trending or whatever.
      • See also Create a package index #24221

Counterpoints

• This could discourage the use of https://luarocks.org/ which is an actual, real package manager.

Proposal

• Probably shouldn't use pack/start, just use plain old 'rtp' (based on feedback from folke/lewis; needs discussion).
  • Reference: https://github.com/lewis6991/pckr.nvim/blob/main/lua%2Fpckr%2Floader.lua contains all of the logic that improves upon pack and specifically start.
• Use curl or vim.fetch() (which uses curl). This doesn't need to be perfect initially, we just need a way of downloading a file.
• Requires git.
• Inline https://github.com/savq/paq-nvim or mini.deps, clean it up, fix some parts of it.
  • mini.deps vs paq: https://github.com/echasnovski/mini.nvim/blob/6a1a44220b3b9ee9856059686fd47b15c8ed83db/doc/mini-deps.txt#L75-L79
• Introduce something like :packinstall.
  • It is handled by the default plugin manager. Can be overidden by another "provider".