I was given a plugin for Vim.
It came in something called a .vimball
.
- What am I meant to do with this exactly?
- Where do I put it?
- Do I need to be root to install it?
Vi and Vim Stack Exchange is a question and answer site for people using the vi and Vim families of text editors. It only takes a minute to sign up.
Sign up to join this communitySimply open the vimball file in Vim and then execute :source %
.
It will move the files to their appropriate folders in your ~/.vim
directory.
You don't need to be root as it just copies files to your ~/.vim
directory. You can delete it after you have sourced the vimball file
:UseVimball path
instead of :so [name].vba
for vim8-packages/dein/vim-plug/minpacIf you use vim8 pack paths or a plugin manager which supports local plugins (e.g. dein or vim-plug), you might want to install a vimball (.vba[.gz]
) into a specific directory and not merge it with your ~/.vim
directory.
vim8 pack path/minpac
If you use the package feature of vim8 or minpac, ~/.vim/pack/manual/start/vis
would be a sensible location. The installation steps would be
$ vim http://www.drchip.org/astronaut/vim/vbafiles/vis.vba.gz
:UseVimball ~/.vim/pack/manual/start/vis
If you use dein or vim-plug, you would install the vimball not in a pack path but one of your choice and would add this plugin with a plugin manager specific line to your $MYVIMRC
:
dein
$ vim http://www.drchip.org/astronaut/vim/vbafiles/vis.vba.gz
:UseVimball ~/.vim/dein-manual/vis
dein#add('~/.vim/dein-manual/vis')
vim-plug
$ vim http://www.drchip.org/astronaut/vim/vbafiles/vis.vba.gz
:UseVimball ~/.vim/plugged-manual/vis
Plug '~/.vim/plugged-manual/vis'
However, note that default plugins (e.g. netrw) are sourced before plugins installed into a vim 8 packpath
. The source order is:
$HOME/.vim/plugin
$VIM/plugin
$VIMRUNTIME/plugin
$HOME/.vim/pack/*/start/*/plugin
This means installing a newer netrw version into a packpath
is not as straightforward as one would think. See for details Vim 8 packages, how do I overwrite a default package?.
:UseVimball
needs that path to exist (e.g. mkdir -p ~/.vim/pack/manual/start/vis
) as the vimball code doesn't understand the vim8 package feature and doesn't expect missing parent directories. Worse, the failure is silent.
Aug 23 at 21:23