vim-galore/content/neovim.md

Neovim

• Help
• Configuration
• Terminal emulator
• Change cursor style dependent on mode

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Help

See :h nvim. Seriously, do it. It contains a table of contents for all the things that either changed or were added to Neovim.

Configuration

Neovim adheres to the XDG Base Directory Specification. If you don't have them set already, $XDG_CONFIG_HOME defaults to ~/.config and $XDG_DATA_HOME defaults to ~/.local/share.

NOTE: The term "vimrc" doesn't refer to a filename, it refers to a configuration file and is used by Vim and Neovim.

Flavour	User configuration directory	User vimrc
Vim	~/.vim	~/.vimrc or /.vim/vimrc
Neovim	~/.config/nvim	~/.config/nvim/init.vim

Working files are put under ~/.local/share/nvim by default.

If you want to share your vimrc with Neovim, you can easily do that like this (assuming you already put your vimrc into ~/.vim for clearer separation):

$ cd
$ ln -s .vim .config/nvim
$ cd .vim
$ ln -s vimrc init.vim

Related help: :h nvim-configuration

Terminal emulator

Neovim implements a proper terminal emulator (libvterm) and can easily fire up a new shell via :terminal.

In Vim you run interactive programs like this: :!read foo && echo $foo. In Neovim this won't work because :! uses named pipes (libuv processes) for communication now. Use :te read foo && echo $foo instead.

By now you might have noticed, that you can't leave the insert mode in a terminal buffer via <esc>, since it gets captured by the terminal emulator instead of Neovim. Use <c-\><c-n> instead.

Since terminal buffers are a new kind of buffer (&buftype is set to "terminal"), there are also new commands for creating terminal mappings: :tmap, :tnoremap, and :tunmap.

There are also two new autocmd events: TermOpen and TermClose.

Here an example configuration:

if has('nvim')
  nnoremap <leader>t  :vsplit +terminal<cr>
  tnoremap <esc>      <c-\><c-n>
  tnoremap <a-h>      <c-\><c-n><c-w>h
  tnoremap <a-j>      <c-\><c-n><c-w>j
  tnoremap <a-k>      <c-\><c-n><c-w>k
  tnoremap <a-l>      <c-\><c-n><c-w>l
  autocmd BufEnter term://* startinsert
endif

Related help:

:h :terminal
:h nvim-terminal-emulator

Change cursor style dependent on mode

The method mentioned in the Vim section doesn't work in Neovim. Instead, define the environment variable NVIM_TUI_ENABLE_CURSOR_SHAPE either in your shell config or in your vimrc:

if has('nvim')
  let $NVIM_TUI_ENABLE_CURSOR_SHAPE = 1
endif

Related help: $ man 1 nvim