How do I sync my vimfiles with Dropbox or other cloud storage?

Question

I followed the directions in this post to sync my vimrc file in Dropbox with my two Windows computers. However, I also want to move all the other user content of my vimfiles folder to Dropbox as suggested by jqno. I've read the documentation on Vim's initialization steps and environment variables, but can't figure out a way to direct it to my plugin folders, syntax files, color schemes, etc. in Dropbox.

This is my current vimrc:

let $MYVIMRC = "C:/Users/Norbert/Dropbox/vimfiles/vimrc"
set runtimepath^=$HOME/Dropbox/vimfiles
source $HOME\Dropbox\vimfiles\vimrc

If I copy all the contents of vimfiles to Dropbox and remove them from my $HOME directory, leaving only this minimal vimrc, none of my plugins load. If all the files are in their normal location, with only the full vimrc in Dropbox, everything works.

I've thought of two directions to go with this:

1. Have only one vimfiles location with full content, located in Dropbox. Find some way to direct Vim to these files by either a relative or absolute path.
2. Have a vimfiles location in Documents or another directory Dropbox can push to, so that each machine receives changes. However, I would still have to move the files on each machine and tell Vim where to look for them.

Answer 1

The way I do this is by having all the vim files located in my dropbox directory and then creating symlinks for the vimrc and vimfiles directory in my home directory. That way, vim isn't even aware that I'm doing anything "non-standard"; it just looks where it normally would and it finds the files as expected.

It's been a a few years since I've had to do this on Windows, but the mklink utility is what you should need to create the symlinks.

Edit: You can save a symlink by placing your vimrc in the vimfiles directory. Checkout :help vimrc for more info.

Answer 2

Have you thought about setting up a Git repository with vimfiles?

Also, $MYVIMRC is a Enviorment Variable that you must set in you system, not on your vimrc, since Vim will go to that folder to locate the vimrc file.