How to change where Vim will read .vimrc file?

Question

I'm re-learning Vim, and now I'm building my own ~/.vim/.vimrc file. Yes, it is store under the .vim/ folder, which is created by MacOSX after I updated to Big Sur. What I want is simply this

set belloff=all

when I put this line in ~/.vimrc it works, while in ~/.vim/.vimrc it's not. So my questions are:

1. What's the first file Vim read so it knows Oh, so Mr. .vimrc your home is at $HOME(or ~)?
2. Which file should I change so that Vim will say Ok, I should read Mr. .vimrc from ~/.vim/?

Answer 1

1. For the first question

According to the help menu (see :help $MYVIMRC), vim will look for a user vimrc in specific places. It look first for ~/.vimrc and then for ~/.vim/vimrc. Vim stops searching after the first one found (that's why we need to remove ~/.vimrc).

Vim will set automatically the $MYVIMRC environment variable to the location of the vimrc used.

2. For the second question:

1. Put your vimrc content in ~/.vim/vimrc (you must remove the ., so vimrc instead of .vimrc)

2. Remove ~/.vimrc

Answer 2

To solve the error "no .vimrc found. please set "vim.vimrc.path", you will need to create a configuration file for the Vim text editor called ".vimrc" and specify its location. Here's how to do it:

1. Open a terminal window and navigate to your home directory: cd ~
2. Create a new file called ".vimrc" using the touch command: touch .vimrc
3. Open the ".vimrc" file in a text editor.
4. Add the following line to the ".vimrc" file, replacing "path/to/.vimrc" with the actual path to the ".vimrc" file: set vim.vimrc.path=path/to/.vimrc
5. Save the ".vimrc" file and exit the text editor.