CODEWITHSUNDEEP
vimvim-pluginvundle
Trendfischer
Trendfischer

Reputation: 7632

How to enable a plugin manager without ~/.vimrc

After using vim for some time now, my ~/.vim/ beginning with my first experiments with vim got really messy over time. So I thought, it would be time to tidy up and to begin with a plugin manager with a clean configuration.

Since I share my configuration over multiple machines, I usually manage my ~/.vim/ path with a git repo. To avoid a big .vimrc, I put my own configuration under ~/.vim/plugin/. This allowed me, to keep all my shared configuration in this folder and to use ~/.vimrc only for machine dependent configuration.

Starting with VAM over NeoBundle and now Vundle I have always the same problem. If I add the required configuration under ~/.vim/plugin/pluginmanager.vim instead of ~/.vimrc, the installed plugins do not load or were only partially loaded. The command :echo &rtp lists the correct bundles, but :scriptnames does not include the installed plugins. If I execute mv ~/.vim/plugin/pluginmanager.vim ~/.vimrc everythings works as expected.

Can anyone explain this behavior and perhaps offer a solution?

My pluginmanager.vim looks like this:

set nocompatible              " be iMproved, required
filetype off                  " required

" set the runtime path to include Vundle and initialize
set rtp+=~/.vim/bundle/Vundle.vim
call vundle#begin()

" let Vundle manage Vundle, required
Plugin 'gmarik/Vundle.vim'
Plugin 'bling/vim-airline'
Plugin 'MarcWeber/vim-addon-mw-utils'
Plugin 'tomtom/tlib_vim'
Plugin 'garbas/vim-snipmate'
Plugin 'honza/vim-snippets'

" All of your Plugins must be added before the following line
call vundle#end()            " required
filetype plugin indent on    " required

My vim installation is version 7.4.52

Upvotes: 0

Views: 1080

Answers (2)

Ingo Karkat
Ingo Karkat

Reputation: 172590

The problem is in the startup order. After your ~/.vimrc has been executed (as the first thing during startup), Vim executes something like :runtime! plugin/*.vim to load the plugins. As your plugin manager is only then invoked, the changes in the 'runtimepath' do not reach that triggering :runtime command any more, and the plugins fail to load.

There are many workarounds:

  • Move your script to ~/.vim/pluginmanager.vim and explicitly :runtime pluginmanager.vim it from (each copy of) your ~/.vimrc.
  • Re-trigger via :runtime! plugin/*.vim.

But I agree with @brettanomyces that the best solution would be to use ~/.vimrc as intended, and place system-specific configuration into a different script instead.

Upvotes: 1

Brett Y
Brett Y

Reputation: 7678

I would recommend using the ~/.vimrc file for general configuration and having another file such as ~/.vimrc.local with your machine specific configuration. You can source ~/.vimrc.local by adding the following to your ~/.vimrc.

if filereadable(glob("~/.vimrc.local")) 
    source ~/.vimrc.local
endif

Credit: http://blog.sanctum.geek.nz/local-vimrc-files/

To solve your issue try adding runtime! bundle/**/*.vim to the end of your pluginmanager.vim file.

See also: :help init

Upvotes: 1

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