path: root/docs/README.md

# Pre-requisite

There are a few dependencies if we want to use Nvim for efficient editing and development work.

## Python

A lot of Nvim plugins are mainly written in Python. To use auto-completion and other features, we must install Python 3.
The easiest way to install is via [Anaconda](https://www.anaconda.com/distribution/#download-section) or [Miniconda](https://docs.conda.io/en/latest/miniconda.html).
Make sure that you can run `python --version`, and that the output should be Python 3.x.

## Pynvim

Nvim relies on [pynvim](https://github.com/neovim/pynvim) to communicate with plugins that utilize its Python binding.
Pynvim is required by plugins such as [wilder.nvim](https://github.com/gelguy/wilder.nvim).

```
pip install -U pynvim
```

## python-lsp-server

[python-lsp-server](https://github.com/python-lsp/python-lsp-server) is the community-fork of [pyls](https://github.com/palantir/python-language-server), and it is a Python [Language Server](https://microsoft.github.io/language-server-protocol/) for completion, linting, go to definition, etc.

```
pip install 'python-lsp-server[all]' pylsp-mypy pyls-isort
```

## Node

We need to install node.js from [here](https://nodejs.org/en/download/):

```bash
# Ref: https://johnpapa.net/node-and-npm-without-sudo/
wget https://nodejs.org/dist/v14.15.4/node-v14.15.4-linux-x64.tar.xz

mkdir -p $HOME/tools
# extract node to a custom directory, the directory should exist.
tar xvf node-v14.15.4-linux-x64.tar.xz --directory=$HOME/tools
```

Then add the following config to `.bash_profile` or `.zshrc`

```bash
export PATH="$HOME/tools/node-v14.15.4-linux-x64/bin:$PATH"
```

Source the file:

```bash
source ~/.bash_profile
# source ~/.zshrc
```

## vim-language-server

[vim-language-server](https://github.com/iamcco/vim-language-server) provides completion for vim script.
We can install vim-language-server globally and set its path:

```bash
npm install -g vim-language-server

export PATH="$HOME/.npm-packages/bin:$PATH"
```

## Git

Git is used by the plugin manager [packer.nvim](https://github.com/wbthomason/packer.nvim) to clone plugins from Git repositories.

Since Git is usually pre-installed on Linux and macOS, we do not need to worry if we are on these two platforms.
For Windows, install [Git for Windows](https://git-scm.com/download/win) and make sure you can run `git` from command line.

## ctags

In order to use tags related plugins such as [vista.vim](https://github.com/liuchengxu/vista.vim), we need to install a ctags distribution.
Universal-ctags is preferred.

To install ctags on macOS, use [Homebrew](https://github.com/universal-ctags/homebrew-universal-ctags):

```bash
brew install ctags
```

To install it Windows, use [chocolatey](https://chocolatey.org/) or [scoop](https://scoop.sh/)

```
choco install universal-ctags

# scoop bucket add extras
# scoop install univeral-ctags
```

To install it on Linux, we need to build it from source. See [here](https://askubuntu.com/a/836521/768311) for the details.

Set its PATH properly and make sure you can run `ctags` from command line.

## Ripgrep

[Ripgrep](https://github.com/BurntSushi/ripgrep), aka, `rg`, is a fast grepping tool available for both Linux, Windows and macOS.
It is used by several searching plugins.

For Windows and macOS, we can install it via chocolatey and homebrew respectively.
For Linux, we can download the [binary release](https://github.com/BurntSushi/ripgrep/releases) and install it.

## Linters

A linter is a tool to check the source code for possible style and syntax issues.
Based on the programming languages we use, we may need to install various linters.

+ Python: [pylint](https://github.com/PyCQA/pylint) and [flake8](https://github.com/PyCQA/flake8).
+ Vim script: [vint](https://github.com/Kuniwak/vint).

## Terminal emulators

Which [terminal emulator](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terminal_emulator) we choose to use greatly affects the appearance and functionalities of Nvim.
Since Nvim supports true colors, terminals that support true colors are preferred.
For a list of terminals that support true colors, see [here](https://github.com/termstandard/colors).

For macOS, we can use [kitty](https://sw.kovidgoyal.net/kitty/), [iterm2](https://www.iterm2.com/), [wezterm](https://wezfurlong.org/wezterm/) or [Alacritty](https://github.com/jwilm/alacritty).
If you ssh to Linux server on Windows, I recommend [wsltty](https://github.com/mintty/wsltty) and [Cygwin](https://www.cygwin.com/),
both of them use [mintty](https://github.com/mintty/mintty) as the terminal emulator.

For the latest version of Windows 10, you can also try [Windows Terminal](https://github.com/microsoft/terminal).

## Patched Fonts

Since statusline or file explorer plugins often use Unicode symbols not available in normal font,
we need to install a patched font from the [nerd-fonts](https://github.com/ryanoasis/nerd-fonts) project.

# Install Nvim

There are various ways to install Nvim depending on your system.
Current configuration is tested against nvim v0.6.1.

## Linux

We can directly download the binary release from [here](https://github.com/neovim/neovim/releases/download/stable/nvim-linux64.tar.gz).
You can also use the system package manager to install nvim,
but that is not reliable since lastest version may not be available.

## Windows

You may download from [nvim release](https://github.com/neovim/neovim/releases/download/stable/nvim-win64.zip) from GitHub and manually extract it.

Another way to install Nvim on Windows is via chocolatey or scoop:

```
choco install neovim

# via scoop
# scoop bucket add versions
# scoop install neovim
```

## macOS

It is recommended to install neovim via [Homebrew](https://brew.sh/) on macOS. Simply run the following command:

```bash
brew install neovim
```

After installing Nvim, we need to add the directory where the Nvim executable resides to the system
Make sure that you can run `nvim` from the command line after all these setups.

# Setting up Nvim

## Install plugin manager packer.nvim

I use packer.nvim to manage my plugins. We need to install packer.nvim on our system first.

For Windows, if curl is installed, run the following command (on PowerShell):

```
git clone --depth=1 https://github.com/wbthomason/packer.nvim "$env:LOCALAPPDATA\nvim-data\site\pack\packer\opt\packer.nvim"
```

For macOS and Linux, run the following command:

```bash
git clone --depth=1 https://github.com/wbthomason/packer.nvim ~/.local/share/nvim/site/pack/packer/opt/packer.nvim
```

## How to install this configuration

On Windows, the config directory is `$HOME/AppData/Local/nvim`[^1].
On Linux and macOS, the directory is `~/.config/nvim`.
First, we need to remove all the files under the config directory (including dot files),
then go to this directory, and run the following command:

```
git clone --depth=1 https://github.com/jdhao/nvim-config.git .
```

After that, when we first open nvim, run command `:PackerSync` to install all the plugins and generate `packer_compiled.lua`.
Since I use quite a lot of plugins (more than 60), it may take some time to install all of them.

# Automatic installation

## Automatic Installation for Linux #

To set up a workable Nvim environment on Linux, I use [this bash script](nvim_setup_linux.sh) to automatically install necessary dependencies,
Nvim itself and Nvim configs in this repo.

Note that the variable `PYTHON_INSTALLED`, `SYSTEM_PYTHON` and `ADD_TO_SYSTEM_PATH` in the script
should be set properly based on your environment.

## Automatic installation for Windows

Run script [nvim_setup_windows.ps1](nvim_setup_windows.ps1) under PowerShell.

[^1]: Use `echo %userprofile%` to see where your `$HOME` is.