1-configuration.md

Step 1: Configuration

You can configure nvim with vimscript and with Lua.
Here we'll use Lua.

The main configuration file is ~/.config/nvim/init.lua. This is run every time you open nvim.

Setup

To add other scripts to the configuration, they need to be in the ~/.config/nvim/lua/ folder.
And you add those scripts by name using require('<script>').

Let's create a new script for saving the configuration files:

cd ~/.config/nvim/lua
touch settings.lua

Go back to the init.lua file and add the following line:

require('settings')

You can create more scripts for keybindings, colors, etc.

Configuration

You can check an in-depth guide of the configuration options here, but here we'll list the most common ones:

Configure options (vimscript "set"s):

vim.opt.<option> = <value>

You can always check the official guide.

Configure key mappings:

vim.keymap.set('<mode>', '<key>', '<map>', {<options>})

Where mode is the current mode (normal - n, insert - i, etc.), key is the key combination to set, map is what the key combination will map to, and options is a Lua table (key-value pairs) of other options (e.g. noremap).

Configure the global variables (vimscript's "let"s):

vim.g.<variable> = '<value>'

Run vim commands:

vim.cmd([[<cmd>]])

To set a color scheme:

vim.cmd([[colorscheme <scheme>]])

You can find our configurations in the examples/ directory of this repo.

Basic options

Some basic options you can pick and choose from are:

-- enable syntax highlighting
vim.opt.syntax = enable

-- copy/paste to system clipboard (requires vim-gtk3)
vim.opt.clipboard = 'unnamedplus'

-- file encoding
vim.opt.encoding = "utf-8"
vim.opt.fileencoding = "utf-8"

-- window splitting
vim.opt.splitbelow = true
vim.opt.splitright = true

-- show numbers
vim.opt.number = true
vim.opt.relativenumber = true  -- for people with problems

-- cursor blink
vim.o.guicursor = table.concat({
  "n-v-c:block-Cursor/lCursor-blinkwait1000-blinkon100-blinkoff100",
  "i-ci:ver25-Cursor/lCursor-blinkwait1000-blinkon100-blinkoff100",
  "r:hor50-Cursor/lCursor-blinkwait100-blinkon100-blinkoff100"
}, ",")

-- show whitespace
vim.opt.list = true
vim.opt.listchars = { tab = '» ', trail = '·', nbsp = '␣' }

-- better matching (match lowercase w/ everything, unless uppercase)
vim.opt.ignorecase = true
vim.opt.smartcase = true

-- highlight current line
vim.opt.cursorline = true

-- minimum number of screen lines to keep above and below the cursor
vim.opt.scrolloff = 10

-- set tabs
vim.opt.expandtab = true
vim.opt.shiftwidth = 4
vim.opt.softtabstop = 4
vim.opt.tabstop = 4

-- set leader key to space
vim.g.mapleader = ' '

-- save backups and other trash to another place so you don't see them
HOME = os.getenv("HOME")
vim.opt.backupdir = HOME .. "/.local/share/nvim/backup"
vim.opt.directory = HOME .. "/.local/share/nvim/swap"

-- save undo history
vim.opt.undofile = true