microbe

microbe relies on pathogen and cURL to provide a simple management tool especially for Github-hosted Vim plugins.

Requires bash, curl and unzip. If Git-support is desired, Git is required.

NOTE: If you are looking for a command line tool that is able to handle more than just Github-hosted Plugins, you might want to have a look at vim-pandemic. It is, due to its capabilities, obviously a little more verbose than microbe (oh, how the names fit!) but looks rather usable. Not a command line tool but very powerful in the same domain is neobundle.

Premise

microbe is all about minimalism. It is a single standalone script (built using bashing) relying only on tools available out-of-the-box on most UNIX systems: bash, curl, unzip, column, ... Only if Git resources shall be accessed is additional work necessary.

The command line interface resembles that of apt-get, hopefully making usage intuitive and concise.

Installation

Current stable Version: 0.2.5

User Installation

mkdir ~/.bin
curl -fkLo ~/.bin/microbe "https://raw.github.com/xsc/microbe-vim/stable/bin/microbe"
chmod +x ~/.bin/microbe

Make sure to add ~/.bin to your $PATH, e.g. using export PATH="$PATH:~/.bin" in your ~/.bashrc.

System-wide Installation

sudo curl -fkLo "/usr/bin/microbe" "https://raw.github.com/xsc/microbe-vim/stable/bin/microbe"
sudo chmod +x /usr/bin/microbe

Usage

microbe <command> [<parameters>]

Commands

• update-pathogen: update pathogen to the most recent version
• install [<GitHub User>/]<plugin>: clone the given plugin and add its contents to pathogen's include path
• remove [<GitHub User>/]<plugin>: remove the given plugin from pathogen's include path
• purge [<GitHub User>/]<plugin>: remove the given plugin from the machine
• update [[<GitHub User>/]<plugin>]: update all plugins or the given one
• list: list all repositories maintained by microbe and whether they are used by the current user

Multiple plugins can be given as parameters. If no GitHub user is found, vim-scripts will be used. Also, for a given <plugin> both repositories <user>/<plugin> and <user>/<plugin>.vim will be checked.

Alternatively, the location of a Git repository can be given instead of a user/repository pair. Obviously, this requires Git.

Examples

Installing from vim-scripts or specific GitHub User

$ microbe install paredit jrk/vim-ocaml
Installing vim-scripts/paredit.vim ...
- Getting ZIP from https://github.com/vim-scripts/paredit.vim/archive/master.zip ... OK.
- Extracting Archive to /home/yannick/.microbe/vim-scripts/paredit.vim ... OK.
- Activating Plugin: vim-scripts/paredit.vim ... OK.
Installing jrk/vim-ocaml ...
- Getting ZIP from https://github.com/jrk/vim-ocaml/archive/master.zip ... OK.
- Extracting Archive to /home/yannick/.microbe/jrk/vim-ocaml ... OK.
- Activating Plugin: jrk/vim-ocaml ... OK.

Installing from Git Repository

$ microbe install https://github.com/jrk/vim-ocaml
Installing external-git/vim-ocaml ...
- Cloning from https://github.com/jrk/vim-ocaml ...

Cloning into '/home/yannick/.microbe/external-git/vim-ocaml'...
remote: Counting objects: 12, done.
remote: Compressing objects: 100% (8/8), done.
remote: Total 12 (delta 1), reused 12 (delta 1)
Unpacking objects: 100% (12/12), done.

- Activating Plugin: external-git/vim-ocaml ... OK.

Updating Plugins

$ microbe update
Updating external-git/vim-ocaml ...

Already up-to-date.

Updating jrk/vim-ocaml ... OK.
Updating vim-scripts/paredit.vim ... OK.

Note that since microbe uses the ZIP archives of GitHub hosted repositories, a new version will always be downloaded, even if no changes occured.

Listing Plugins

$ microbe list
external-git/vim-ocaml   (installed)  312KB  /home/yannick/.microbe/external-git/vim-ocaml
jrk/vim-ocaml            (installed)  72KB   /home/yannick/.microbe/jrk/vim-ocaml
vim-scripts/paredit.vim  (installed)  108KB  /home/yannick/.microbe/vim-scripts/paredit.vim

Note the size difference between external-git/vim-ocaml (Git clone) and jrk/vim-ocaml.

Hitting the Cache

$ microbe install paredit
Installing vim-scripts/paredit.vim ...
- Using Cached Plugin.
- Activating Plugin: vim-scripts/paredit.vim ... OK.

Removing a Plugin from Pathogen

$ microbe remove paredit
Removing vim-scripts/paredit.vim ... OK.

$ microbe list
external-git/vim-ocaml   (installed)      312KB  /home/yannick/.microbe/external-git/vim-ocaml
jrk/vim-ocaml            (installed)      72KB   /home/yannick/.microbe/jrk/vim-ocaml
vim-scripts/paredit.vim  (not installed)  108KB  /home/yannick/.microbe/vim-scripts/paredit.vim

Removing a Plugin from Disk

$ microbe purge external-git/vim-ocaml
Removing external-git/vim-ocaml ... OK.
Purging external-git/vim-ocaml ... OK.

$ microbe list
jrk/vim-ocaml            (installed)      72KB   /home/yannick/.microbe/jrk/vim-ocaml
vim-scripts/paredit.vim  (not installed)  108KB  /home/yannick/.microbe/vim-scripts/paredit.vim

Export, Import and Configuration via .vimrc

You can use microbe to write the installed plugins to a file:

$ microbe export > microbe.plugins
$ cat microbe.plugins
"bundle jrk/vim-ocaml
"bundle paredit

The format of the plugin list is suitable for use in .vimrc, since " indicates a comment and will thus not influence your actual configuration (this is very similar to infect's approach to plugin management.

You can load packages using:

microbe load [<file>]

where <file> defaults to your .vimrc.

License

Copyright © 2013-2015 Yannick Scherer

Distributed under the MIT license.