MinVim

My fast simple minimal well-structured NeoVim configuration.

Rather making compromises than bloating and slowing down.

This NeoVim configuration was built with simplicity in mind. It uses a mostly minimal set of plugins (specs) and is in my best attempt structured with performance in mind. It is a code division, yet easification of kickstart.nvim, which was used as an inspiration. Lua modules are split by meaningful human context, not technical designs.

Not meaningful configuration was avoided, to reduce the technical footprint/debt and ensure very high cognitive and systematic compatbiility to vanilla (Neo)Vim. This configuration leverages netrw and native tabs and it just uses telescope.nvim to navigate beyond those capabilities (to find files or buffers).

An idiot admires complexity, a genius admires simplicity.

• Terry A. Davis

Features

• State of the art plugin system using lazy.nvim with folke's clear suggestions using the one-spec-per-file approach and prefering main/opts over the config callback, open Lazy via <Space>l
• State of the art fuzzy finding using telescope.nvim via ripgrep with improved defaults such as a sane dynamic layout strategy and a consistent result ordering, <Space>b to navigate buffers, <Space>e to find files and <C-7> to live grep
• Smart syntax highlighting and indenting using nvim-treesitter
• With dprint or prettier configurations in the pwd ancestor tree as well as when editing files with advanced formatting requirements (where nvim-treesitter's experimental indentation just isn't good enough anymore) the built-in formatprg and equalprg is set to launch the preferred external formatter, respectively
• Free AI powered code suggestions using Windsurf (opt-in, boot via <Space>me, authenticate via <Space>ma)
• Free inline translations via DeepL (opt-in, authenticate by exporting your DEEPL_AUTH_KEY before launching nvim, then translate in visual mode via <leader>trxx where xx is your target language code, i.e. <leader>tren for English or <leader>trde for German)
• Save all buffers with persistent auto session storage (Session.vim) as well as hidden buffer clean up when hitting <Space>ss
• Bridges for firenvim and vscode-neovim to use NeoVim in the browser and in VSCode/VSCodium/Windsurf
• Overly simplified user commands (cmds) to substitute otherwise necessary dependencies
• A backed-in lua util library for common tasks (utils)
• Zen focus, no file trees, uses netrw bindings explore files as well as telescope.nvim bindings to find files, <leader>ss saves all buffers and closes them when they are not visible to keep your buffer management clean (use window splitters or native tabs to keep relevant buffers open, or save single buffers with <C-s>)
• LSP free by design, because LSPs are too slow and complex, use an IDE instead, I want my terminal to be snappy and fast
• A simple .vimrc for you to upload to remote systems to let vim in your SSH sessions behave more like your nvim
• Also compatible with tmux, use <C-t> as your PREFIX in tmux, so that you can rely on the <C-b> in remote sessions where you should use vim, not nvim

Installation + Quickstart

Caution

Before you start backup your $HOME/.config/nvim directory. Please read the ./install script before running it! I'm not responsible for any damage. This repository is primary for me to backing up my personal custom configuration, but maybe it is beneficial to you.

You should fork this repo in a seperate branch, so you can adjust my configuration for your personal needs.

Ensure dependencies

Ensure you have:

• NeoVim (nvim)
• tree (tree) used by GitTree
• ripgrep (rg) used by telescope

Clone configuration

git clone [email protected]:<yourusername>/minvim.git
cd minvim
git checkout -b custom
./install

Ensure additional formatters

To support advanced formatting beyond treesitter, please install

• dprint for markdown (global) and web files in general (project only)
• prettier optionally for markdown (global) and web files all galore (project only)
• shfmt for sh files
• rust for rust files
• go for go files
• zig for zig files
• flutter for dart files

Make an alias launcher

To automatically reload the persistent session that is created when hitting <Space>ss, please add this alias your rc files:

alias vim='{ f() { command -v nvim >/dev/null 2>&1 && { export NVIM_APPNAME="nvim" && export DEEPL_AUTH_KEY="$(sshstore deepl-key)" && { test "$#" -eq 0 && nvim +"sil! so Session.vim" || nvim "$@"; }; } || vim "$@"; }; }; f'

Note

sshstore is a function that I have written to protect my API keys using the ssh-agent. You can see its implementation here. You can also just store your API key in plain text, since the API is free, but it is not recommend. If you skip setting DEEPL_AUTH_KEY deepl.vim will not load which is a fine option if you don't need translations integrated into NeoVim. deepl.vim is also compatible with Visual Studio Code or one of its supported forks, but you have to launch it from within nvim, unless you set the DEEPL_AUTH_KEY environment variable in an alias that covers the code/windsurf CLI launcher as well. Hence launching any VSCode forks from your App Drawer will disable the plugin.

Finalize

Restart your terminal and launch vim (your custom alias) to launch nvim +"sil! so Session.vim" which sources a local session if it exists. From there, simply find your keymaps via <Space>fk or just explore keymaps.lua and telescope_maps.lua

Tip

If you put Session.vim into your (global) .gitignore, the permanent session storage does not become part of your working changes in any local git repository.

Update

Updating from upstream means to pull and merge my master into your custom branch. You should resolve any conflicts afterwards.

t.b.d

Compatibility Bridges

VSCode

This configuration is compatible with vscode-neovim/vscode-neovim, but it recommends you to use these keybindings and these settings in VSCode to make all work properly.

Your VSCode will share the Zen focus mentality by following the concept of this configuration. Tabs are treated like buffers and native tabs in NeoVim and share the same keybindings. Tabs are hidden, <leader>b will browse these. <leader>ss will save all tabs and close them when they are not visible to keep your tab management clean. Use window splitters to keep relevant buffers open or fallback to the traditional <C-s> binding.

Important

Trusted mode in VSCode is disabled, you want to browse and validate unknown projects in NeoVim, not your full-fledged IDE.

Next, please install the recommend extensions. Simply open this repository in VSCode and accept installing suggested extensions to make everything work properly.

Note

You can link the configurations to all IDEs to keep it in sync with this repository:

I.e. on macOS:

ln -sf "$(pwd)/.vscode/settings.json" "$HOME/Library/Application Support/Code/User/settings.json"
ln -sf "$(pwd)/.vscode/keybindings.json" "$HOME/Library/Application Support/Code/User/keybindings.json"
ln -sf "$(pwd)/.vscode/settings.json" "$HOME/Library/Application Support/VSCodium/User/settings.json"
ln -sf "$(pwd)/.vscode/keybindings.json" "$HOME/Library/Application Support/VSCodium/User/keybindings.json"
ln -sf "$(pwd)/.vscode/settings.json" "$HOME/Library/Application Support/Windsurf/User/settings.json"
ln -sf "$(pwd)/.vscode/keybindings.json" "$HOME/Library/Application Support/Windsurf/User/keybindings.json"

Warning

The Cascade window in Windsurf has no proper focus clause for the keybinding setup, so leader keyboard shortcuts will only work in the editor window while it's open. Cascade can be toggled via <C-l>.

FireNvim

This configuration is compatible with glacambre/firenvim. To install the browser bridge and transform a textarea to a Neovim window, you have to trigger it with (<C-e> / <M-e>) in the browser (which is changable in the browser settings.

Keybindings for tabs, netrw as well as formatters are disabled in this mode. The plugin always needs to load to ensure it being installed prior browser usage, since it can't hook nvim into the browser before that.

FAQ

How to hide files ignored by .gitignore when doing <C-e> (netrw)?

You can't. I tried to use git ls-files to obtain the unignored file tree and feed it into vim.g.netrw_list_hide (see netrw.lua, however netrw_list_hide treats all the files as patterns which makes it insanely slow on code bases with lots of unignored files such as build artifacts.

It was so depressing, that I understood why people end up replacing netrw with something with more feature rich that comes with the ability to hide git-ignored files.

Since this configuration aims to be very dependency-slim and bloat-free, I wrote a user command to complement the lack of the feature in netrw with a compromise:

Wanting to explore the file tree without git-ignored files often means you know about a common ancestorial directory, but don't know the filename (or you would use telescope) or where it's located at (or you would use netrw witout the feature). You know the file you search for is already part of your unignored files, since you want to edit it in nvim, and thus it makes sense to see and explore the tree with git-ignored files hidden.

Hit <C-g> or run :GitTree to run my GitTree user command, it will pipe the git ls-files command to tree and then write it to a temporary buffer. You cannot navigate in this buffer, so prepend the keystroke or append the command with a number to specify how many levels deep you want to show the tree, i.e. 8<C-g> or :GitTree 8 for 8 levels.

Pick a level you are confident about, from here search for your common ancester and move along. To navigate to a file move the cursor to a file and hit gf. For any other file options, simply 0f.y$ and use your terminal.

How to search and replace all files in my working directory?

NeoVim doesn't offer this out of the box, so many plugins exist. However, it wasn't hard to yet again roll my own Grep user command to do this and I used native functionality by leveraging the quickfix list to browse your results and verify your changes.

Although, you can also use the command to only search, telescope is more handy for plain search operations. However, the command starts to shine when you want to try to mass replace in many files, but it requires caution: Save all your work (<Space>ss) and then commit your changes or at the very least stage (and stash) them. The command will open the buffer for each affected file and apply the replacement without any prompt. If you save a buffer changes will be applied. If you save all buffers all changes will be applied.

• To start, run the command like this: :Grep! s/foo/bar/g **/*.lua (replaces foo with bar in all lua files.
• Use <Space>n and <Space>p to navigate between changes
• Use u to undo changes on that particular buffer (or <Space>X to simply delete this buffer without applying the proposed changes
• Use <Space>q to close the quickfix list, the changed buffers remain open
• Use <Space>l to open the quickfix list and jump to the last selected change again
• To undo everything, just ZQ and restart vim which will reload your previous session before starting the entire operation