voom: a simple Vim plugin manager

voom is a simplest-thing-that-works tool to manage your Vim plugins. It installs plugins, updates them, and uninstalls them.

It assumes:

• The plugins you use are on GitHub (or in-progress on disk).
• You use Pathogen or Vim packages to manage Vim's runtime path.

voom is an alternative to vim-plug, Vundle, NeoBundle, vam, Vizadry, etc.

Features:

• Fast: plugins are installed in parallel.
• Lightweight (100 lines of bash).
• No git submodules :)

Installation

Voom works with both Vim and NeoVim.

Vim users: just follow the instructions below.

NeoVim users: follow the instructions below but:

• replace ~/.vim with ~/.config/nvim
• replace ~/.vimrc with ~/.config/nvim/init.vim

If you’re using Vim packages: follow the instructions below but:

• replace ~/.vim/bundle with ~/.vim/pack/bundle/start (or any other package name instead of bundle)

If you already have a ~/.vim directory

Empty your ~/.vim/bundle/ directory and git-ignore everything in bundle/.

$ rm -rf ~/.vim/bundle/*
$ cd ~/.vim && echo 'bundle/' >> .gitignore

If you don't yet have a ~/.vim directory

Create it together with the autoload and bundle subdirectories:

$ mkdir -p ~/.vim/{autoload,bundle}

Install Pathogen

You can skip this step if you want to use Vim 8 packages.

$ curl -LSso ~/.vim/autoload/pathogen.vim https://tpo.pe/pathogen.vim

Add this to the top of your ~/.vimrc:

execute pathogen#infect()

Install the voom script somewhere on your PATH

For example, if ~/bin is on your path:

$ curl -LSso ~/bin/voom https://raw.githubusercontent.com/airblade/voom/master/voom

NeoVim users: tell voom where your configuration is:

$ alias voom='VIM_DIR=~/.config/nvim voom'

If you’re using Vim 8 packages: tell voom where to save your plugins configuration:

$ alias voom='VIM_BUNDLE_DIR=~/.vim/pack/bundle/start voom'

Declare your plugins in plugins and add the file to your repo

$ echo 'airblade/voom' > ~/.vim/plugins
$ voom edit
$ git add ~/.vim/plugins

You don't need airblade/voom in your manifest – the voom script does all the work – but it makes editing the manifest a little nicer.

Usage

You declare your plugins in plugins, a plain-text manifest in your vim repo. Open your manifest with:

$ voom edit

Here's an example of a manifest:

# Comments start with a hash character.
# Note the plugin declarations are case-sensitive.

# Declare repos on GitHub with: username/repo.
tpope/vim-fugitive

# Declare repos on your file system with the absolute path.
/Users/andy/code/src/vim-gitgutter

Run voom without arguments to install and uninstall plugins as necessary to match your manifest.

To update your (GitHub-hosted) plugins:

$ voom update

If you just want to update one plugin:

$ voom update vim-fugitive

Restart Vim to pick up changes to your plugins.

How does it work?

When voom installs a plugin:

• GitHub-hosted: voom clones it [1] into ~/.vim/bundle/.
• local: voom symlinks it into ~/.vim/bundle/.

When voom uninstalls a plugin:

• GitHub-hosted: voom removes the directory from ~/.vim/bundle/.
• local: voom removes the symlink from ~/.vim/bundle/.

[1] voom performs a shallow clone of depth 1. If you subsequently want a repo's full history, do git pull --unshallow.

Why is voom written in bash not VimL?

Installing, updating, and uninstalling plugins simply involves making directory trees available at the appropriate locations on the file system. It's basic command-line stuff involving things like git, ln, rm. A shell script is the natural solution.

All a VimL wrapper would do is call those same shell commands – but with all the problems that come with shelling out from Vim.

In this case the simplest thing that works is a shell script.

Intellectual Property

Copyright Andrew Stewart. Released under the MIT licence.