Re: Neovim plugin/addon packaging

[Efraim Flashner <efraim@flashner.co.il>]

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On Sat, May 01, 2021 at 04:25:18PM -0400, Jack Hill wrote:
> Thanks for your reply.
> 
> On Fri, 30 Apr 2021, Efraim Flashner wrote:
> 
> > On Fri, Apr 30, 2021 at 01:03:23AM -0400, Jack Hill wrote:
> > > Greetings Guix,
> > > 
> > > I'd like to improve the experience of installing Neovim plugins/add-ons with
> > > Guix. I've submitted #48112 [0] which adds an XDG_DATA_DIRS search path so
> > > nvim (the Neovim executable name) will be able to find plugins installed by
> > > guix at …/share/nvim/site.
> > 
> > I guess my first question is does it work? I think I first tried
> > something similar for vim with 'share/vim/vimfiles' but it didn't
> > actually work for vim.
> 
> Yes, it does work! I tested it with neovim-syntastic and a local
> neovim-fugitive package both with a guix environment and manually
> manipulated environment variables.
> 
> A difference between Neovim and Vim is that Neovim supports XDG_DATA_DIRS
> (and XDG_CONFIG_DIRS) as real search paths while the environment variables
> for Vim are single directories (compare `:help runtimepath` in the two
> editors).
> 
> > > Currently, we only have one such package, neovim-syntastic. I'd like to add
> > > more. Many plugins are compatible with both vim and nvim. However, they
> > > search for plugins at different paths. Therefore, the vim-syntastic and
> > > neovim-syntastic packages, which use the copy-build-system, differ only in
> > > the destination directories of the install-plan (and changing "Vim" to
> > > "Neovim" in the description).
> > > 
> > > My initial inclination is to remove the duplication of maintaining two
> > > install-plans (and other arguments) by creating a procedure that would take
> > > as input a Vim package that uses copy-build-system and output a Neovim
> > > package with the install-plan re-written.
> > > 
> > > Perhaps that solution would be overwrought. How would you recommend handling
> > > this situation?
> > 
> > My first idea would be to have the one package install the files into
> > both directories and combine them, but I feel like it falls apart when
> > it comes to searching for vim/neovim plugins and naming. One package
> > with two names? Call it vim-neovim-syntastic?
> > 
> > If vim/neovim move more apart and actually need separate plugins in the
> > future then I guess it would make more sense to have two actual packages
> > that can be installed by name (vim-foo and neovim-foo).
> 
> A combined package is an interesting suggestion. However, I share the
> concern about searching for packages. Having packages that are compatible
> with both editors use one naming scheme and ones that are compatible with
> only one use a different naming scheme seems like a implementation detail
> that would be better not to expose to me.
> 
> I drew inspiration for creating the Neovim package variants with a procedure
> from the package-for-python2 and sbcl-package->ecl-package. Of course those
> procedures have build system support and aren't depending on a common usage
> pattern of copy-build-system.
> 
> Is it time a a vim-build-system? Perhaps not, but I'm still not sure what
> the right way forward is.

ng0/nikita thought about it a few years ago but I think the
copy-build-system works well enough. I know for vim we need a vim
profile hook to create the documentation, does neovim need something
like that too?


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Efraim Flashner   <efraim@flashner.co.il>   אפרים פלשנר
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