What are the differences between the Vim plugin managers?

Question

I have been looking at the different package managers for Vim, and the one I decided to use is vim-plug.

However, I have seen others like pathogen and vundle, and I honestly don't know what the difference is.

Can someone give me a brief overview of the differences, so I can decide which works best for me?

Answer 1

vim-plug is a nice alternative to Vundle, it does things a bit different from a technical point of view which should make it faster (see this). It has most (or all?) of the features of Vundle.

• Parallel update procedure for Vim with any of +ruby, +python, or Neovim. Falls back to sequential mode using Vimscript if none is available.
• Lazy loading, for faster startup (see this).
• Install plugins.
• Update plugins.
• Review / rollback updates.
• Supports OSX, Linux & UNIX systems, and MS Windows.
• Post-update hooks e.g. automatically recompile YCM

To start using it:

curl -fLo ~/.vim/autoload/plug.vim --create-dirs \
    https://raw.githubusercontent.com/junegunn/vim-plug/master/plug.vim

And in your vimrc:

call plug#begin()
Plug 'tpope/vim-sensible'

" On-demand loading
Plug 'scrooloose/nerdtree', { 'on': 'NERDTreeToggle' }
call plug#end()

Then give the command

:PlugInstall

to install the listed plugins.

Answer 2

Pathogen is simple. Essentially it just does:

• autoload plugins from a folder
• generate help tags for these plugins

Pros:

• minimalist

Cons:

• everything else done manually (installing, updating, removing, etc.)
• no lazy loading

To install it download pathogen.vim to ~/.vim/autoload:

mkdir -p ~/.vim/autoload ~/.vim/bundle && \
curl -LSso ~/.vim/autoload/pathogen.vim https://tpo.pe/pathogen.vim

And add to your .vimrc:

call pathogen#infect()
call pathogen#helptags() "If you like to get crazy :)

If you don't like to get crazy, only call :Helptags when you need to.

Plugins are then added to ~/vim/bundle.

Answer 3

Both Vim 8.0 and Neovim have their own built-in package manager. In Vim 8.0 create the following directories: .vim/pack/*/start, where * is any name you want to use; e.g. .vim/pack/jimmy/start.

Clone your plugin into the start directory just as you would if you were using pathogen.

With Neovim, the directories are a little more longwinded:

.local/share/nvim/site/pack/*/start. From there do the same as for Vim.

There is no need at all for another plugin manager.

In Vim or Neovim, run :h packages for a little more detail. Read the part about colours because they are different, though not much. You need no extra instructions in your .vimrc or your nvim/init.vim files.

Hope that helps.

Answer 4

Vundle is more complex. It is a package manager à la apt or yum for plugins. It can:

• search a plugin index
• update plugins
• generate helptags automatically
• keep, but not use, plugins in the autoload folder
• clean out such unused plugins
• Works on Linux, OSX, and MS Windows

To install:

git clone https://github.com/gmarik/Vundle.vim.git ~/.vim/bundle/Vundle.vim

And then add to your .vimrc:

set nocompatible              " be iMproved, required
filetype off                  " required

" set the runtime path to include Vundle and initialize
set rtp+=~/.vim/bundle/Vundle.vim
call vundle#begin()

" let Vundle manage Vundle, required
Plugin 'gmarik/Vundle.vim'

" more Plugin commands
" ...
call vundle#end()            " required
filetype plugin indent on    " required

To install a plugin, use the Plugin command in .vimrc (more examples on the Github README):

" plugin on Github
Plugin 'tpope/vim-fugitive'
" plugin from http://vim-scripts.org/vim/scripts.html
Plugin 'L9'

And then call :PluginInstall from .vim (or vim +PluginInstall +qall).

Answer 5

dein.vim: As a follow up of this question, I'll add here the plugin manager made by the well-known Shougo.

According to the README, the plugin has the following dependencies:

• Vim >7.4 or neovim: while keeping Vim up to date is a good thing, it may be problematic for some users that previous versions are not supported
• git: which is pretty common for a package manager
• rsync: which is not as common as git

The author claims that it is faster than NeoBundle. A benchmark can be found on the project's readme page.

One original concept of this plugin manager is that it does not provide any commands, but only functions: for example, to update your plugins you can't use something like :PlugUpdate, you'll have to call: :call dein#update(). To be honest I haven't found an explication of this design choice.

^{Also, someone created a plugin which provides these "missing" commands. I have no idea if this is a good idea or if this is against the main idea of the plugin manager but the author mentions it in the FAQ of the doc file.}

Dein.vim supports getting plugins from Github (with a facilitated access to plugins from vimscript.org) and from local directories.

The plugin manager provides some classical features like updating and disabling the plugins. It also allows the execution of hooks at installation time.

Note that according to the FAQ, it seems you have to manually build the helptags of the plugins it installs.

An interesting point is that the author wants dein.vim to be easy to test and to maintain so the repository also contains some test scripts.

Finally, I'd say that this plugin manager seems to be designed to be lightweight and fast, which is interesting, but I think it is less user-friendly than vim-plug or Vundle, for example.

---

Oh, also, Shougo describes dein.vim as a "Dark powered Vim/Neovim plugin manager" if any one knows what it means, feel free to edit this answer: I'm curious ;-)

Answer 6

I especially like VAM for its self-deployment: all you need is your .vimrc and then start vim.

So you don't need the To Install line used by most other plugin-managers (the first step of installing the plugin manager itself).

Answer 7

As far as I'm concerned, I want the plugin manager I use to support dependencies.

The reasons are that I'm maintaining several plugins and I have a lot of inter-dependencies : a generic library is used by all, the template/snippet engine is used by the C++ suite, the refactoring plugin uses also the ctags library-plugin, and so on. Requiring end-user to execute up to 10 lines to install the plugins they are interested in doesn't appear to me as a good solution.

So far, I only know of two such plugins: vim-addon-manager, and NeoBundle. VAM has forked its database code to vim-pi after many exchanges on vim official mailing list. The idea was that NeoBundle (and any other plugin interested in managing dependencies) could eventually exploit vim-pi.

I've recently came across vim-flavor that also handles dependencies. On the subject it checks plugin versions to install the right one.

Note: Since my initial answer,

• NeoBundle development has stopped ;
• and while vim-pi updates regularly its database from plugins on vim.org, and that VAM can still be used to express dependencies, it seems no longer possible to add alias to vim-pi database: MR/PR aren't merged anymore

AFAIK, none of these plugin clone/install/update plugins in background/parallel. As I don't install a new vim environment, nor update the plugins I've installed once a month, honestly, I don't care. They of course update 'helptags', take care of 'rtp', and so on.

Answer 8

Most of these plugin managers do a great job of managing plugins but leave the headache of managing the vimrc to you. If you have multiple machines and want the same config across, Vire makes it super easy. You don't need git or figure out submodules or any extra effort to get setup or migrate.

• Install Python, which is what most modern Vim plugins are written in and required anyway
• pip install vire
• Post your existing vimrc onto Github as a gist and maintain it there
• If on Windows, vire -i to install the latest Vim or (Neovim with -i -n)
• Remove any existing plugin function calls and define commented out calls to install any plugins " Plug 'tpope/vim-unimpaired'
• vire gistID

Then run vire anytime you want your vimrc or plugins to be updated or with -i to update the app as well.

Vire leverages Vim / Neovim's pack feature to load plugins. You can also continue to use your existing plugin manager but use Vire to only install Vim, the vimrc, and the plugin manager itself if preferred.

Answer 9

For people who want a full plugin manager using Pathogen, there is also apt-vim. You can install it with curl -sL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/egalpin/apt-vim/master/install.sh | sh (as described here: https://www.linuxsecrets.com/1715-vi-editor-tips-trick-and-secrets-into-the-vi-vim-editor-part-ii ). Once installed, you can just type apt-vim install followed by the name of the package repository, similar to the Ubuntu apt package manager.

Answer 10

I was looking for a way to use pathogen but update easily and make it portable, so perhaps a bash script might be helpful (using vim-plug functionality)-

#!/bin/sh

# inspired by https://github.com/thoughtbot/dotfiles/blob/master/hooks/post-up

if [ ! -e "$HOME"/.vim/autoload/pathogen.vim ]; then
  curl -fLo "$HOME"/.vim/autoload/pathogen.vim --create-dirs \
      https://raw.githubusercontent.com/tpope/vim-pathogen/master/autoload/pathogen.vim
fi

if [ -e "$HOME"/.vim/autoload/plug.vim ]; then
  vim -E -s +PlugUpgrade +qa
else
  curl -fLo "$HOME"/.vim/autoload/plug.vim --create-dirs \
      https://raw.githubusercontent.com/junegunn/vim-plug/master/plug.vim
fi
vim -u "$HOME"/.vimrc.bundles +PlugUpdate +PlugClean! +qa

And then an example .vimrc.bundle-

"installed via the Githubs
call plug#begin('~/.vim/bundle')
Plug 'bling/vim-airline'
Plug 'scrooloose/syntastic'
Plug 'scrooloose/nerdtree'
Plug 'tpope/vim-fireplace'
Plug 'vim-scripts/paredit.vim'
" etc

call plug#end()

"disable vim-plug sugar-- actual config should be set via .vimrc
filetype plugin indent off 
syntax on