I recently switched over to using the vscode-neovim extension for VSCode.

What wasn’t obvious though was how to get a plugin manager and plugins / vim customisations working.

I’ll add here quickly my plugins setup as I’m using vim-surround, and a bunch of Tim Pope plugins:

• vim-sensible
• vim-surround
• vim-repeat
• vim-unimpaired
• vim-commentary

I’m on Linux / Ubuntu 22.04, with nvim installed via apt with ppa-neovim/unstable – you need this to get the current required nvim v0.8+.

I moved from Vim to Neovim and I still use my .vimrc and amazingly this kind of setup seems to work with vscode-neovim too.

As per the :help nvim-from-vim have the following ~/.config/nvim/init.vim:

	set runtimepath^=~/.vim runtimepath+=~/.vim/after
	let &packpath = &runtimepath
	if exists('g:vscode')
	" VSCode extension
	source ~/.vimrc.vscode
	else
	" ordinary Neovim
	source ~/.vimrc
	endif

view raw init.vim hosted with ❤ by GitHub

This happily loads my ~/.vimrc file for terminal nvim and then loads ~/.vimrc.vscode for vscode-neovim – which also appears to load:

1. It sets my leader to <space>
2. It loads Plug
3. It loads my custom key mappings
4. It loads vim-surround and and vim-repeat
   1. I know it loads these because I have a command map <leader>' ysiw'
   2. This puts single quotes around the current word
   3. This works (so vim-surround works)
   4. I can then ‘repeat’ my adding quotes with . which means vim-repeat is working in combination with it.

I have massively stripped my .vimrc file down and renamed it to ~/.vimrc.vscode:

	let data_dir=has('nvim') ? stdpath('data') . '/site' : '~/.vim'
	if empty(glob(data_dir . '/autoload/plug.vim'))
	silent execute '!curl -fLo '.data_dir.'/autoload/plug.vim –create-dirs https://raw.githubusercontent.com/junegunn/vim-plug/master/plug.vim'
	autocmd VimEnter * PlugInstall –sync | source $MYVIMRC
	endif
	set nocompatible
	call plug#begin('~/.vim/bundle')
	Plug 'tpope/vim-sensible'
	Plug 'tpope/vim-surround'
	Plug 'tpope/vim-unimpaired'
	Plug 'tpope/vim-repeat'
	Plug 'tpope/vim-commentary'
	call plug#end()
	nnoremap <space> <nop>
	let mapleader="\<space>"
	let g:mapleader="\<space>"
	try
	autocmd FileType php setlocal commentstring=\/\/\ %s
	autocmd FileType javascript setlocal commentstring=\/\/\ %s
	autocmd FileType reason setlocal commentstring=\/\/\ %s
	autocmd FileType dosbatch setlocal commentstring=rem\ %s
	autocmd FileType rust setlocal commentstring=//\ %s
	catch
	endtry
	map <leader>' ysiw'
	map <leader>" ysiw"
	map <leader>; A;<esc>
	map <silent> <leader><cr> :nohlsearch<cr>
	nnoremap <leader>bb :buffers<cr>:b<space>
	map <leader>s :w<cr>

view raw .vscode.vimrc hosted with ❤ by GitHub

Some interesting things that do work:

• vim-plug works!
• Basically it’s just really really cool that you can use a .vimrc
  • This means almost tons of remaps should work
• :buffers works but it’s kind of ugly
• :nohlsearch works (removing the highlight)
• :vsplit works and moving with <C-w>[hjkl]

Lots of things don’t work like:

• I got a conflict between my vim-plug config for VSCode and for neovim
  • By running :PlugClean inside VSCode this wiped all my neovim vim-plug directories
  • Effectively I think this means its better to maintain your plugins via neovim
  • Then use a subset within VSCode
• preview, quickfix and location windows
  • so vim-fugitive won’t work
• I don’t think :windo diffthis works
• You have the same problem as with VSCode Vim that undoing all changes doesn’t get rid of the file ‘dirty bit’ so you have to save it to fully undo
• :bd doesn’t work as you expect – you need to use :q instead
• I found the :e <type file path> didn’t work with auto-complete beyond the current directory – just use Ctrl + P instead.
• There is no command history – you can’t use the up arrow to go to previous ex commands that you typed – I’m surprised about this so maybe there is a config setting somewhere Ctrl + N/Ctrl + P are used instead of up/down

I’ll try to list more as I go further.

For a couple of hours spent setting it up and to have 90% of the plugins I need working is really great.

Until I can get fugitive and vim diffs (in combination with fugitive) working I will still want to use terminal nvim, but that fits quite easily into my coding process for now.