I get the basics of the runtimepath as explained in :h 'runtimepath'
. Except for the remark at the end
for Neovim (nearly identical in Vim):
You can put a directory before $VIMRUNTIME to find files which replace
distributed runtime files. You can put a directory after $VIMRUNTIME
to find files which add to distributed runtime files.
What I don't understand is the sense in which putting a directory before $VIMRUNTIME
replaces distributed runtime files. I thought that putting something before in $RUNTIMEPATH
just affects the order in which its contents are sourced/loaded.
So could this just be poor phrasing in the documentation or am I missing something?
And in this case, I interpret 'distributed' as meaning 'coming packaged with vim when you installed it' instead of the sense of 'distributed computing' or 'distributed version control'.