Neovim — editor configuration: basic setup

Today we’ll start configuring our console editor Neovim to our preferences. The note will be small)

Neovim is an evolutionary development of the classic Vim editor. To understand what this Vim thing is and why it’s needed — read my previous article: VIM — Console editor: an introduction. In that article I tried to bring readers up to speed: I briefly described the editor itself, its modes of operation, and gave frequently used hotkey commands.

Today we’ll perform the initial configuration of the Neovim editor. Note that the configuration from this article is also valid for Vim, with a few exceptions.

It won’t hurt too much, so please, hit the jump)

Preface

You can configure Neovim in two ways:

• classic — using the built-in vimscript language;
• extended — using the Lua programming language via the API mechanism.

For better compatibility with classic Vim, I’ll be doing the configuration using the first option. But I might switch to Lua in the future)

As usual, all actions in the article will be performed in a Linux Mint environment, specifically version 21. All articles related to this distribution can be found by tag.

If Neovim isn’t installed yet, let’s fix that)

Installing Neovim on Linux Mint

Open the terminal and run the command:

sudo apt update && sudo apt install -y neovim

If anyone’s interested in the terminal appearance — the Nord color scheme is used. I talked about the setup in the article: Customizing Linux Mint 20/21 + Nord theme.

The terminal uses a configured Zsh shell — there’s a separate article about setting it up: ZSH — Interactive command shell for Linux + Oh-My-Zsh.

Basic Vim/Neovim configuration

For Neovim, create a config folder and open the file for editing:

mkdir ~/.config/nvim

nvim ~/.config/nvim/init.vim

For classic Vim, the command is:

vim ~/.vimrc

In vimscript, comments are denoted by an open double quote character ". This is hyper inconvenient, and apparently in recent Neovim versions you can use the hash #, but for compatibility we’ll leave the default.

And add the following content:

" By r4ven_me

" ############################
" ###### BASIC SETTINGS ######
" ############################

set mouse=a                 " Enable mouse support
set encoding=utf-8          " Set character encoding to UTF-8
set number                  " Display line numbers
set scrolloff=7             " Keep at least 7 lines visible above/below cursor
"set noshowmode              " Disable mode display
set cursorline              " Highlight the current line
set ignorecase              " Enable case-insensitive searching
set smartcase               " Use smart case for searching
set laststatus=2            " Always show status line
set tabstop=4               " Set tab width to 4 spaces
set softtabstop=4           " Set soft tabstop to 4 spaces
set shiftwidth=4            " Set indentation width to 4 spaces
set expandtab               " Use spaces instead of tabs for indentation
set autoindent              " Enable automatic indentation
set fileformat=unix         " Set file format to Unix (LF line endings)
"set showtabline=2           " Always show tabline
set clipboard=unnamedplus   " Use system clipboard
"set termguicolors           " Enable true color support
set splitbelow              " Split new windows below the current one
set splitright              " Split new windows to the right of the current one
set equalalways             " Keep window sizes equal
set sessionoptions-=blank   " Don't save blank windows in sessions
filetype indent on          " Disable automatic indentation for specific filetypes

Neovim configuration file

As you can see, I left comments in English next to each item (for universality).

For the changes to take effect, just save the file and re-enter the editor:

:wq

nvim ~/.config/nvim/init.vim

Let’s give a description of each parameter in English)

So:

Description of basic parameters

All the parameters listed above can also be temporarily activated/deactivated manually while working in the editor. To activate, simply enter the parameters listed above in command-line mode (invoked with the colon key :, i.e. Shift + ;). For example, to enable line number display:

:set number

And to deactivate:

:set nonumber

# or

:set number!

This syntax applies to many parameters. To disable, you need to add the no prefix or the ! suffix before/after the desired parameter.

Afterword

This was the first part of the basic Neovim configuration. As you can see, even when configuring such a small list, you can understand how flexible the settings the editor offers are.

In the next article we’ll talk about setting up swap and backup files to ensure safety when working with files in case of power outages or disk write problems, etc. Don’t miss it.

Thanks for reading. Good luck learning Vim/Neovim.

Useful sources

• This config on my GitHub
• File types — r-notes.ru
• VIM — Console editor: an introduction

Other articles of mine:

• ZSH — Interactive command shell for Linux + Oh-My-Zsh
• Customizing Linux Mint 20/21 + Nord theme

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That should be it. If not, check the logs 🙂