Neovim - Encrypt Files like Vim with :X

Question

Problem

I use neovim and I have tried to encrypt my files with :X but then this Error Message comes up:

E492: Not an editor command: X

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Questions

1. Is there any way to do it in neovim like you do it in vim?
2. Do you know the reason why it only works in vim and not in neovim?

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Last Word

In case you don't know the :X vim command:

:X is a vim command, that lets you encrypt the current file with a password

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Thanks for your help :)

Answer 1

In neovim, encryption is intentionally removed. This is the justification: https://github.com/neovim/neovim/commit/85338fe1d5a56f82546e16c305c2048c081771e0, https://github.com/neovim/neovim/issues/694, and https://github.com/neovim/neovim/issues/701.

Since that time, vim has chosen to instead greatly improve the encryption with blowfish2 https://github.com/vim/vim/blob/master/runtime/doc/editing.txt#L1538 and xchacha20 with libsodium https://github.com/vim/vim/blob/master/runtime/doc/options.txt#L2527 rather than remove the feature.

Simply put, :X is not part of the feature set of neovim. vim and neovim are different projects which have different feature sets. It is not possible to have everything.

Answer 2

Q: Is there a way to do it in neovim?

A: No, there is not. The :X got removed. But there are some alternatives like the GPG-Plugin.

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Q: Why does it only work in Vim and not Neovim?

A: Because the old algorithms were insecure and the community voted against the cryptography for neovim and then they got removed in this commit.

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Hope this helped someone who had the same problem like me :)