vimp 0.1.4

Command line package manager for the vim editor.

Vimp is a simple plugin manager for vim that downloads and installs plugins and dependencies, updating helptags along the way. In short, by typing

$ vimp get undotree@ctrl-u

vimp will download undotree, install it in vim and map it to CTRL-u (<C-u>). If you decide you don’t want undotree anymore (or just want to disable the keyboard mapping), type

$ vimp disable undotree@ctrl-u

If you specify several plugins, it will download all of them, including dependencies, them all, in parallel:

$ vimp get molokai powerline ctrlp signify nerdtree@ctrl-d \
  undotree@ctrl-u snipmate

To see what you have installed, simply type vimp ls.

Installing

The latest stable release is on PyPI:

$ pip install vimp

You can also clone the repository and install that:

$ git clone https://github.com/cslarsen/vimp.git
$ cd vimp
$ python setup.py install

Warning

While vimp currently works fine, it should be considered pre-release alpha grade quality. Meaning that I actively experiment with it, and may break stuff without notice at the current phase.

Also, you may want to backup your entire ~/.vim directory and ~/.vimrc file before experimenting. Using vimp should be quite safe at this time, but just in case you really don’t want to mess with your setup, please backup.

Finally, vimp does not recognize your existing plugins. It does work fine side-by-side with existing plugins, but I haven’t done much testing in this situation (a future version of vimp may be able to annex existing plugins, we’ll see).

More examples

Anyway, you can also specify several plugins to install. On a fresh or existing vim installation, you can install a lot of stuff by typing:

$ vimp get molokai powerline ctrlp signify nerdtree@ctrl-d \
  undotree@ctrl-u snipmate

This will download all the plugins above and their dependencies, and will do so in parallel. It will also map NerdTree to CTRL-d and UndoTree to CTRL-u.

If you do this on a fresh vim install, it will install Pathogen also (note: it does not enable vim plugins for you, but this is something it probably should in a future version).

In the above example, it will also change the current color scheme to Molokai. To switch from Molokai to the grb256 color scheme, just type:

$ vimp switch molokai grb256

To disable a package, e.g. NERDTree, type

$ vimp disable nerdtree@ctrl-d

and to actually remove it from disk, use the remove command. To list installed packages, type vimp ls and to list all available type vimp ls -a.

Vimp is in early stages of development, so expect bugs and lots of changes. I made it for myself, so I don’t care about any of the other managers.

By the way, it does depend on Pathogen and will install it by default. This is strictly not necessary, but I like Pathogen, so that’s that for the moment.

If you like vimp, let me know. The way to put forward suggestions is to provide patches. If something is broken, let me know.

How it works

It downloads vim packages to ~/.vimp/cache/, extracts files to a staging area ~/.vimp/installed and creates symlinks pointing to it from ~/.vim/bundle.

To enable stuff like Pathogen and colorschemes, it adds vimrc entries in .vimp/vimrc. This is read by adding a few lines to your ~/.vimrc. (I know, touching .vimrc is not cool, but I’ll change that later on).

Flags to vimp

• vimp -h or vimp --help to print help.

• vimp -V or vimp --version to print version.

• vimp -v <command> [argument(s)] to print all actions performed, e.g. vimp -v install fuzzyfind.

Commands

• vimp help to print help.

• vimp help list to print help on the command list.

• vimp install <package(s)> to install packages.

• vimp list to list installed packages

• vimp list -a to list all available packages`

• vimp list <package(s)> to list package details.

• vimp disable <package(s)> to disable packages, but leave on disk.

• vimp remove <package(s)> to disable and delete packages.

• vimp version to print version.

Aliases

I haven’t decided on the exact command names yet, so I have several aliases so I can see which ones I like:

• vimp ls is an alias for vimp list

• vimp get is an alias for vimp install

• vimp add is another alias for vimp install

• vimp find is an alias for vimp search

• vimp rm is an alias for vimp remove

• vimp uninstall is an alias for vimp disable

Unimplemented commands

• vimp update to update the list of available packages.

• vimp upgrade to actually upgrade packages with newer versions.

Requirements

You need Python and vim, of course. It relies on Pathogen, but will install this by default if it can’t find it.

Adding new plugins / installations scripts to vimp

You can add new scripts to vimp by modifying scripts.py. I won’t explain in detail how to now, but just look at what’s there already.

If you do add new scripts that work, please send a patch to me.

To do

There is a lot of stuff missing, and many corner cases that I don’t handle. However, I don’t consider it dangerous to use vimp. In fact, I feel it’s rather quite safe.

Anyway, how much I will work on vimp depends on how many people can help me with patches. Currently, it works pretty well for me.

Most glaringly, I don’t have support for updating whatsoever.

List of various todos:

• Add support for updating, upgrading

• Do not leave behind dependencies when uninstalling

• etc.

Bugs

There are many bugs. Please help me fix them!

In particular, globbing for extracting files doesn’t work well.

License

Copyright (C) 2014 Christian Stigen Larsen

Distributed under the LGPL v2.1, LGPL 3.0, GPL 2.0 or GPL 3.0.