How to autoload multiple rc-style files in Vim 8+

Question

I want to split up my .vimrc into multiple files by language or toolchain, use case, etc.

In fact, my end goal is to be able to provide instructions to students in the format of "If you want the same settings I have, just do this: curl https://example.com/vim/foobar.vim -o ~/.vim/xxxxx/foobar.vim".

I know that as of vim 8 we can now use ~/.vim/pack/XXXX/start/ to put plugins without requiring a 3rd party loader. However, when I tried moving some of the things from my .vimrc there as ~/.vim/pack/plugins/start/go.vim (my settings for golang) it didn't seem to load my settings anymore, even though I had packloadall in my .vimrc.

Is it possible to drop a file into a folder and have it load? Do I need to declare what it depends on in some way?

Similar Question

I'm aware of Is it possible and useful to split vimrc?, but that doesn't seem to address the new features of vim 8.

I'm looking to find a solution that doesn't require additional manual edits to .vimrc, and I believe that with vim 8 such a thing exists.

Answer 1

Without newish packages feature you can use ~/.vim/plugin/ folder.

All vim files you have in this folder are auto sourced using :h :runtime:

I do exactly this for my settings:

1. main vimrc is ~45 lines having only core options
2. separate ~/.vim/plugin/mappings.vim file for mappings and commands
3. other separate vim files (foldtext setup, terminal setup etc)

Example: https://github.com/habamax/.vim/tree/master/plugin

PS, .vim folder has the structure of a packaged plugin where you can have ftplugins, syntax, lazy loaded autoloads, filetype detection, etc. I remember long time ago all plugins were copied into mentioned .vim subfolders and it was a mess.

Answer 2

Create a "vimrc" plugin

I don't know if this is a "good" way to do it, but this seems to work:

• Create a "vimrc" plugin at ~/.vim/pack/plugins/start/vimrc
• Add its pieces to ~/.vim/pack/plugins/start/vimrc/plugin/{foo,bar,baz}.vim

Example

mkdir -p ~/.vim/pack/plugins/start/vimrc/plugin/

cat <<EOF > ~/.vim/pack/plugins/start/vimrc/plugin/go.vim
let g:syntastic_go_checkers = ['go', 'golint', 'errcheck']
let g:go_fmt_command = "goimports"
EOF

It's fine that this always loads because it's only setting variables and syntastic is only loading all of its stuff that uses the variables based on the filetype anyway.

See also

The comment in the question about the "after" ftplugin, and https://vim.fandom.com/wiki/Keep_your_vimrc_file_clean