Migrate to lua configuration for NeoVim

[scottmuc]

I'm finding NeoVim a lot more mature now. The idea of porting the configuration to a general purpose language like lua that's used in other environments is appealing. Plus, future integrations should be less painful too.

• NeoVim IDE from Scratch
• Nat Bennett's intro post
• Primeagen's 0 to LSP from scratch

Have to give respect to the vimscript configuration that has been used for a long time.

Why not use some out-of-the-box NeoVim (like LunarVim)? I love those when I'm in a work environment where everyone shares the configuration (❤️ Pivotal). In that type of environment, the activity of pairing brings you up to speed rapidly (we used luan's vimfiles). The intention of this task is not to do this quickly. It's going to be a slow-plod while I learn and get better at my tools. My skills have atrophied a bit over the last years.

[scottmuc]

Getting some inspiration from https://github.com/ThePrimeagen/init.lua but don't feel the need to create a user specific configuration. I think init.lua is fine for holding all the remaps and config settings. I will do the package separation configuration though. I find that rather cohesive. Removing the package, therefore also remove the package specific configuration file.

Packer does look much more complex that all the previous vim package configuration I've used in the past, but I'm accepting that as a necessary complexity to reach the more IDE like functionality.

[scottmuc]

I'm happy that I've removed jk as my <Esc> mapping. I've been in the habit of hitting jkjkjkjkjkjkjkjk on repeat. I'll stick with <Esc> until a something else feels better.

[scottmuc]

Some handy resources I've found along the way:

• https://www.imaginaryrobots.net/posts/2021-04-17-converting-vimrc-to-lua/
• https://neovim.io/doc/user/lua-guide.html#lua-guide-config
• https://github.com/nanotee/nvim-lua-guide
• https://herrbischoff.com/2022/07/neovim-using-init-vim-and-init-lua-concurrently/

[scottmuc]

So far got packer working. I stripped out the machine automation from coalesce_this_machine. I feel like I want to be a bit more hands on with this. So bootstrapping a new environment will have a few more commands to run. The init.lua will still be symlinked so it should be easy. Things that need to run:

• Cloning the packer as per the Quickstart
• Launching nvim and running :PackerSync
• Quitting and relaunching to ensure no errors.

I think I can live with those steps for now.

[scottmuc]

When trying to configure telescope it complained that my version if nvim is too old (running 0.5). To upgrade, I followed the instructions here: https://launchpad.net/~neovim-ppa/+archive/ubuntu/stable

I've been using <C + p> as my shortcut for a while so this might take a little getting used to. I went with the keymaps that they suggested: https://github.com/nvim-telescope/telescope.nvim#usage

[mamachanko]

https://lunarvim.org is my workhorse 🐴

[scottmuc]

@mamachanko I can see myself switching to that at some point. So far this has been a good exercise is learning the lua configuration method and getting acquainted to the plugins that this new configuration strategy has enabled.

[scottmuc]

With treesitter and lsp stuff I'm seeing some issues.

• Mason is failing to install language servers because it cannot execute npm. It looks like I need to add a nodejs runtime to my system to get this to work.
• I like using git from the CLI and having an LSP and treesitter trying to do stuff in the commit buffer is annoying. I'm sure there's a way to prevent that from happening.
• Not getting the indention that I wanted (and expected from vim-sleuth.
• I need to :w! for files opened with telescope in order to save them.

Also noticed that LSP Zero has a version v2 but requires neovim > 0.8. So I might be in for a "fun" upgrade.

At this point, tree-sitter and lsp-zero have fulled in a ton of stuff. I've lost my terraform highlighting so I'll try and get that back.

[mamachanko]

I enjoyed watching this series from the originator of LunarVim https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLhoH5vyxr6Qq41NFL4GvhFp-WLd5xzIzZ It's not about LunarVim.

[scottmuc]

@mamachanko, yup! Got that listed in the description as part of my original inspiration for this. I'm watching it as I go with (along with some of the other resources).

[scottmuc]

After upgrading to neovim v0.10.0-dev, and installing nodejs with nvm. Things are working really well! The bashls is working great for my bash scripts. My .editorconfig is handled by neovim itself (as of >= 0.9.x). The files I open with telescope don't require me to use :w! to save. My *.tf files.

Things to look at documenting/automating:

• Configuring apt to install neovim from unstable repo to get latest version.
• Add nvm installation to workstation automation. Or possibly use asdf to manage nodejs at the user level (and only use nvm for project level setup.

[scottmuc]

The inspection assistance that comes from :LspInfo is great!

Now that I see it detected it as a gitcommit, I can add some configuration around treesitter and cmp to ignore these.

[scottmuc]

Thankfully v2.x of lsp-zero is working, but it appears that v3.x is going to break a lot of my configuration (https://github.com/VonHeikemen/lsp-zero.nvim#future-changesdeprecation-notice). Something to keep in mind in a few months.

[scottmuc]

Summary

I've published a demo video (24m) displaying the results of this migration.

Upon completing this, it really solidified in my head the core components of a good editor experience:

• good navigation capabilities (find a file, find text in files, go to definitions, etc...)
• easy to look at syntax highlighting and informational details
• real time code analysis (linting, formatting, etc...)
• code completion (through snippets, or real time analysis of the project code)
• key-bindings to do all-of-the-above quickly

NeoVim shines by being able to store the configuration in a repo and be able to write the configuration in lua. I can configure it to be as noisy or as quiet as I prefer.

[thenbe]

This randomly popped up on my yt feed.

Bad news is packer is more or less dead. Good news is that there is a better replacement You can start with it like this, which gives you immediate access to this. But since you're intentionally taking it slow this might be a better fit. Good luck!

[scottmuc]

Thanks @thenbe! I recently learnt about kickstart.nvim after the video released. I love over-explained configuration for learning. I'll look at lazy.nvim and switch. This ecosystem is moving so fast!

[scottmuc]

With the above commit, the video is out-of-date. I think this is what I like about attaching a GitHub issue to the video. The code is always "latest" while a video/tutorial/quickstart is often a snapshot in time.