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Configuring Vim

Vim is a text editor that is difficult to get comfortable with, but once you have a set configuration that works for you it is very portable and powerful to use when editing files on remote hosts. Configuring vim requires taking a look at your local user's .vimrc, and depending on the features you require, you may need to install and manage vim plugins.

For some context, vim users are classified as 'Light' and 'Dark' users. Dark vim users prefer heavy customization within the .vimrc and usually include multiple plugins often times carrying their own custom settings also stored in the ~/.vimrc, but we will get to those later.

There are many forked versions of Vim created by dark users. I have personally not experimented with these, but they would be worth taking a look at should your needs surpass the configurations below.

Plugin Management

Vim stores plugins within ~/.vim/bundles/ and managing them is made simple using various vim plugin managers. See some of the repositories below for different options. Currently, I am using Pathogen, but there are many options that provide great solutions to vim plugin management.

I prefer Pathogen since it pairs well with Git submodules, but again, to each their own. Consider the options below.

Pathogen
Plug
Vundle
Dein
And I'm sure there are more out there..

Custom .vimrc

Comments in .vimrc is as follows -

" Comments to describe what the line of code below does
"" Actual working code for the .vimrc file - could be uncommented and ran

If ~/.vimrc does not exist in your home directory, create it, and customize it to suit your needs. For example, the following .vimrc will set your tab size to 2 from the default 4, and convert your tabs to spaces automatically. This is useful when sharing code, as things are more compact and using spaces is less ambiguous than tab sizes across platforms.

set tabstop=2 shiftwidth=2 expandtab autoindent mouse=a

Here, tabstop is the tab size setting, measured in spaces. shiftwidth allows vim to compensate according to our tab settings when automatically indenting, etc. expandtab converts our tab size setting into actual spaces. set autoindent will set vim to automatically indent to our current depth when in insert mode and moving to a new line by pressing enter. This will not insert spaces unless text is input. mouse=a enables mouse interaction with split windows, when supported.

" Comments to describe what the line of code below does
"" Actual working code for the .vimrc file - could be uncommented and ran

The ~/.vimrc can also include vim plugin settings, these are specific to the plugin they modify and are usually documented well within the plugin's repository.

Backup Vim Configurations

To use vim to its full potential, its useful to stay organized when testing out different vim configurations, and providing yourself with a git repository to track your changes is a good way to do so. This way, should problems arise or should your system be lost for any reason, returning to your preferred setup is not a case a deja vu, but instead a planned restoration of your already backed up settings. This enables you to quickly establish your settings on a new host without over complicating the process or repeating steps across multiple hosts.

To create a git repository storing dotfiles, see information on stow. For an example on using stow with vim, see below. This same concept can generally be applied to any application that stores local user configurations, but it is very imporant to know exactly what changes will be applied when using stow as it will replace system files - stow(8)

Stow Backups

To backup vim configurations using stow, create the file structure like the below tree by copying your vim settings with cp -r ~/.vim* ~/backup/vim/-

vim/
├── .vim
│   ├── autoload/
│   ├── bundle/
│   ├── colors/
│   ├── doc/
│   ├── .netrwhist
│   ├── plugin/
│   └── .VimballRecord
└── .vimrc

If the ~/backup/vim/ directories don't exist, create them. Once this has been created, from the ~/backup/ directory, run stow --adopt vim/. this will create a symbolic link to the configuration files and directories on your system, which enables you to edit the files within ~/backup/vim/ and the changes will reflect in the configurations stored within the parent ~/ directory. If these files or configurations already exist in the parent directory, stow will overwrite them. If they do not exist, they will be created / linked to the files in ~/backup/vim/.

This is a powerful tool when storing configurations in remote repositories, sometimes for various users or configurations based on distributions or window managers.

Personally, I prefer this method over writing a script to handle this manually, but since I did the work at writing the manual backup script, take a look below if you're interested in such a solution. I haven't revised it in quite a while, but it may at the very least provide some ideas.

Backup Scripts

I created a script that configures vim according to my preferred settings.

Feel free to tweak it to suit your needs, create your own, or find a better one somewhere else. If nothing else, you might get some ideas by reading through the script below -

Depending on your system, the script below attempts to globally configure vim's default settings

#!/bin/bash
## Author: Shaun Reed | Contact: shaunrd0@gmail.com | URL: www.shaunreed.com ##
## A custom bash script to configure vim with my preferred settings          ##
## Run as user with sudo within directory to store / stash .vimrc configs    ##
###############################################################################

# For easy colorization of printf
GREEN=$(tput setaf 2)
RED=$(tput setaf 1)
UNDERLINE=$(tput smul)
NORMAL=$(tput sgr0)


welcome=( "\nEnter 1 to configure vim with the Klips repository, any other value to exit." \
  "The up-to-date .vimrc config can be found here: https://github.com/shaunrd0/klips/tree/master/configs" \
  "${RED}Configuring Vim with this tool will update / upgrade your packages${NORMAL}\n\n")

printf '%b\n' "${welcome[@]}"
read cChoice

if [ $cChoice -eq 1 ] ; then
  
  printf "\nUpdating, upgrading required packages...\n"
  sudo apt -y update && sudo apt -y upgrade
  sudo apt install vim git 

  # Clone klips repository in a temp directory
  git clone https://github.com/shaunrd0/klips temp/
  # Relocate the files we need and remove the temp directory
  sudo mkdir -pv /etc/config-vim
  sudo cp -fruv temp/README.md /etc/config-vim/
  
  sudo cp -fruv temp/configs/ /etc/config-vim/
  
  rm -Rf temp/
  printf "\n${GREEN}Klips config files updated"
  printf "\nSee /etc/config-vim/README.md for more information.${NORMAL}\n\n"

  # Create backup dir for .vimrc
  sudo mkdir -pv /etc/config-vim/backup/
  printf "\n${GREEN}Backup directory created - /etc/config-vim/backup/${NORMAL}\n"

  # Set global vimrc defaults to klips settings
  sudo cp /etc/config-vim/configs/.vimrc /usr/share/vim/vimfiles/vimrc

  # Stash the current .vimrc
  sudo mv -bv ~/.vimrc /etc/config-vim/backup/
  printf "${RED}Your local .vimrc has been stashed in /etc/config-vim/backup/${NORMAL}\n\n"

  # Copy our cloned config into the user home directory
  sudo cp /etc/config-vim/configs/.vimrc ~/
  printf "${GREEN}New /usr/share/vim/vimfiles/rc configuration installed.${NORMAL}\n"

  # Reinstall Pathogen plugin manager for vim
  # https://github.com/tpope/vim-pathogen
  printf "\n${RED}Removing any previous installations of Pathogen...${NORMAL}\n"
  sudo rm -f /usr/share/vim/vimfiles/autoload/pathogen.vim
  
  # Install Pathogen
  printf "\n${GREEN}Installing Pathogen plugin manager for Vim....\n"
	printf "\nIf they don't exist, we will create the following directories:\n"
	printf  "/usr/share/vim/vimfiles//autoload/    ~/.vim/bundle/${NORMAL}"
  mkdir -pv /usr/share/vim/vimfiles/autoload /usr/share/vim/vimfiles/bundle && \
  sudo curl -LSso /usr/share/vim/vimfiles/autoload/pathogen.vim https://tpo.pe/pathogen.vim
  printf "\n${GREEN}Pathogen has been installed! Plugins plugins can now be easily installed.\n"\
         "Clone any plugin repositories into /usr/share/vim/vimfiles/bundles${NORMAL}\n"

  # Remove any plugins managed by this config tool (Klips)
  printf "\n${RED}Removing plugins installed by this tool...${NORMAL}\n"
  sudo rm -R /usr/share/vim/vimfiles/bundle/*

  # Clone plugin repos into pathogen plugin directory 
  printf "\n${GREEN}Installing updated plugins...${NORMAL}\n"
  git clone https://github.com/ervandew/supertab /usr/share/vim/vimfiles/bundle/supertab && \
  printf "\n${GREEN}Supertab plugin has been installed${NORMAL}\n\n" && \
  git clone https://github.com/xavierd/clang_complete /usr/share/vim/vimfiles/bundle/clang_complete && \
  printf "\n${GREEN}Clang Completion plugin has been installed${NORMAL}\n\n"
  vimConf=( "\n${UNDERLINE}Vim has been configured with the Klips repository.${NORMAL}" \
    "\nConfiguration Changes: " )
  printf '%b\n' "${vimConf[@]}"


else
printf "\nExiting..\n"
fi

sudo cat /etc/config-vim/configs/.vimrc-README
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