How to create config to be used by vim init.lua?

Question

I am going to write my nvim config in lua. I want to use this config on several computers. And vim configuration on these computers should be slightly different. For example, on some installations I want plugin X to be installed, but on others - not.

So I want to create some installation-specific file in ~/.config/nvim. Kind of config file for my vim config. (and no, I will not go deeper). As this file is different on different installations I will not commit it, but rest of lua configuration scripts will read it and act accordingly.

What format is most appropriate for this file? For example, if I make it yaml, will it be possible to open and parse it from init.lua ?

Answer 1

Instead of using a separate YAML file, one option is to just use Lua directly. Use simple Lua syntax to populate a Lua table from your local config file.

Perhaps something like:

localconfig = {}
dofile(os.getenv("HOME") .. "/.config/nvim/localconfig.lua")

And then in file ~/.config/nvim/localconfig.lua you can add:

localconfig.setting1 = "value1"
localconfig.setting2 = 2
localconfig.setting3 = {4, 9, 16}

etc.

You can initialize localconfig in your init.lua with defaults before you load the overrides.

Answer 2

You can use lua-yaml to parse Yaml files from Lua.

Or use the Lua binding to LibYAML lyaml