Neovim is a fork of Vim, it’s Vim using the Lua scripting engine built-in in addition to the Vimscript engine to create plugins for the terminal based text editor. It’s highly configurable and is a great alternative to most IDEs with performance and its keyboard-centric approach.
Follow along and learn how to configure Neovim.
1. Prerequisites
To run Neovim in the terminal, a few prerequisites must be met.
- A computer running an OS (Windows, Linux Distro or macOS).
- Have Git installed, can be easily downloaded from the downloads page of Git or using a package installer on the terminal.
- A graphical text editor that comes with the OS or using Neovim after installation to edit files.
2. Checking for a package manager
I am used to using the terminal on Windows 10 (i.e. powershell) to install most of my applications that I use. I use winget to install most of my applications. You can check if winget is installed on your powershell terminal by running the winget command.
If it is not installed you can install it from the Microsoft Store or from this
3. Installing Git
Git is a version management system that is the industry standard. It is widely used by GitHub and other distributed version control providers online and can be used offline as well.
It can be installed using the Git download page or the package manager of your choice. I use Winget,the command for my system is winget install --id Git.Git -e --source winget
Follow the installation instructions when the installation window pops up. When the installation is done you will see the message “Successfully installed” on the terminal.
4. Installing Neovim
Neovim can be installed by following the link to their Neovim download page on GitHub and following instructions on the page.
Personally, I use Winget to install applications using the terminal, so type in winget install Neovim.Neovim
. When the installation is done you will see the message “Successfully installed” on the terminal.
After installing using whichever method you choose, this should be your terminal screen once you enter the nvim
command in the terminal. It will look like this.
So with these steps completed, it is time to start adding a package manager along with the plugins we want to, customize the vanilla neovim experience to something a little colourful and personal. If Neovim is not your Jam you can also check out my VSCODE posts here