Edit in .vimrc but it's not updated in .git

Question

So I was editing my ~/.vimrc file from the home directory and saved it, but when I went to check whether it had been updated in the vimrc file (for git) which is located at /.vim/vimrc, it did not show any update that I made in ~/.vimrc. I've been researching but still can't find anything helpful yet. I'm still very new to Git and GitHub so please be patient with me.

I had some troubles setting ~/.vim a git repository as when I committed, it saved everything but I only want ~/.vimrc in there. All the things that I have in ~/.vim (as of right now) are:
1. autoload (contains pathogen.vim)
2. bundle (contains vim-live-latex-preview)
3. colors (contains all the colorschemes)
4. doc (contains some info about the live-latex-preview)
5. VIMRC (contains the vimrc file)

Answer 1

Required background

Vim's runtimepath and directories

The runtimepath (:help 'runtimepath') is a list of directories searched for runtime files, such as documentation under doc, colorschemes under colors, and more.

The runtimepath virtually always includes ~/.vim (for user settings), the vim runtime (shipped with vim), and ~/.vim/after (for overriding or extending anything that came before). You will probably also find $VIM/vimfiles or similar; this is used (I think) by programs that wish to install some of their own vim files when they are installed (e.g., I think clisp came with some extra syntax files).

Plugins, packages, and package managers may manipulate the runtimepath; consult the relevant documentation for information.

I find :put =split(&rtp, ',') a handy shortcut to produce a list of my runtimepath.

Vim's user customization (:help startup and :help vimrc)

At step number 3 of the startup process, vim will read a vimrc file. It can be located in several places, depending on your operating system. Most of them allow you to use ~/.vimrc or ~/.vim/vimrc, which is relevant for our discussion. The first one found is used, in the order given.

So to use only ~/.vim/vimrc, it must be the first file in the list of vimrc locations under :help vimrc!

You can often check what vimrc was detected with the command :edit $MYVIMRC inside vim.

Here's another relevant bit of documentation:

RECOMMENDATION: Put all your Vim configuration stuff in the $HOME/.vim/ directory ($HOME/vimfiles/ for MS-Windows). That makes it easy to copy it to another system.

-- :help vimrc

More details are at :help .vimrc.

Git

So, I can't and won't give an overview of git here. It's too big. But I'll link you to some resources:

• a workshop I gave to get people up-and-running with git (and not lie to them about the underlying model): git-wizard
• a list of resources I collected for the workshop: resources.md
• in particular, the git book

One thing I will say about git's model is that by default, the directory containing .git/ is the "top" or "root" of a git-tracked repository. Also by default, git will not track any file you don't git add to the repository first (so new files are initially "untracked"). As far as I know, it is very difficult (perhaps impossible) to track files that are above the root of the repository.

So, if you have

~/.vim/
|- .git/ ...
|- autoload/ ...
.
.
.

It will be very hard (if not impossible) to track ~/.vimrc in the same repo. Luckily, you can track ~/.vim/vimrc…

Lastly, git has a concept of "ignoring" certain files (like compiled binaries or tags produced by :helptags). But you tell it what to ignore using files like .gitignore and the one named by core.excludesFile. See both git help ignore and git help config.

In this situation…

Well, it really depends on what you want to do. As I've tried to explain, both vim and git give you the power; they don't do much without you asking, but you've got to learn their core models and their defaults well enough to understand what to ask them to do.

In this case, I would suggest

1. Move ~/.vimrc to ~/.vim/vimrc, and don't even try to do ~/.vim/VIMRC/vimrc.
2. If you don't want to commit everything in a repository, don't git add .—that's how you tell git to track everything in a repository.
3. If you want to ignore some things in git, learn how gitignore works (see the reference I gave above).
4. If you want git to track a file, git add file and git commit are the best ways to tell git to care about a file for the rest of its life. (Of course, you still have to git add and git commit when you've made changes later, but now those changes will show up in git status and git diff, because the files are "tracked".)
5. If you want to "start over" to try to set things up with git the right way the first time around, you can remove the .git directory. But I would make a backup copy of your entire ~/.vim somewhere, just in case things go awry. You can also make a second backup without the .git directory to try practicing git before you go and setup your ~/.vim directory for real. (This is much simpler than trying to use git rebase and git filter-branch to clean up a mess, particularly when the repo is small, personal, and has a short history. In a bigger setting, such as a large open-source project or a corporate project, such a thing would be Very Bad™. You would want to learn how to use rebase and filter-branch on only your local commits for that situation. Once commits are pushed/public, it is best to leave them untouched. You can always create a new branch to try to clean them up. :endrant)