Neovim installation on WSL2 Debian Windows 11

1. Neovim

1. Neovim

1.1. Philosophy

I've been using Vim since ~2008, but Neovim has meanwhile gathered a very vibrant plugin community for writing and notes, which is my main Vim use case. So decided to look into how I can set up neovim to support that. These are my notes how to set up Neovim to support note taking and writing. These notes mainly serve me to understand how I can setup a reproducible config on Windows 11 running Debian Sid in WSL within Windows Terminal.

1.2. Installation

Neovim is in Debian but its latest stable lags several major versions behind the upstream stable, so installing with bob.

Install dependencies for bob:

$ sudo aptitude install rustup

$ cd ~/sources

$ unzip bob-linux-x86_64.zip

$ wget https://github.com/MordechaiHadad/bob/releases/download/v2.8.3/bob-linux-x86_64.zip

$ cd bob-linux-x86_64/

$ ./bob use stable

Nvim is now installed. Check version installed:

$ nvim -V1 -v

NVIM v0.10.0-dev-2947+ge1ca7a7bf
Build type: RelWithDebInfo
LuaJIT 2.1.1710088188
Compilation: /usr/bin/gcc-10 -O2 -g -Og -g -flto=auto -fno-fat-lto-objects -Wall -Wextra -pedantic -Wno-unused-parameter -Wstrict-prototypes -std=gnu99 -Wshadow -Wconversion -Wvla -Wdouble-promotion -Wmissing-noreturn -Wmissing-format-attribute -Wmissing-prototypes -fsigned-char -fstack-protector-strong -Wno-conversion -fno-common -Wno-unused-result -Wimplicit-fallthrough -fdiagnostics-color=always  -DUNIT_TESTING -DHAVE_UNIBILIUM -D_GNU_SOURCE -DINCLUDE_GENERATED_DECLARATIONS -I/home/runner/work/neovim/neovim/.deps/usr/include/luajit-2.1 -I/home/runner/work/neovim/neovim/.deps/usr/include -I/home/runner/work/neovim/neovim/build/src/nvim/auto -I/home/runner/work/neovim/neovim/build/include -I/home/runner/work/neovim/neovim/build/cmake.config -I/home/runner/work/neovim/neovim/src -I/usr/include

   system vimrc file: "$VIM/sysinit.vim"
  fall-back for $VIM: "/usr/local/share/nvim"

Run :checkhealth for more info

Then keep your installation up-to-date:

$ ./bob update |nightly|stable|--all|

1.3. Post-installation tasks

1.3.1. DONE symlink nvim

So that sudo nvim works.

$ sudo ln -s /home/pyyhttu/.local/share/bob/nvim-bin/nvim /usr/bin/nvim

1.3.2. DONE Install nvim config

$ git clone https://github.com/meuter/nvim ~/.config/nvim

After this you have relatively sane config under $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/nvim/lua:

$ tree

Refactor the plugins to only include these:

Then add org-mode, x and y:

1.3.3. DONE Install clipboard support

So that copying / pasting into / to nvim works. Easiest way to do this is with Winget and win32yank.

Then launch cmd.exe and issue:

winget install win32yank

After this also mouse right click and copy/paste works as well as "*y yanking.

1.4. Plugins

.config/nvim/lua/plugins/orgmode.lua:

return {
      "nvim-orgmode/orgmode",
  event = "BufRead", -- replace VeryLazy, otherwise syntax highlighting won't work
  config = function()
    -- Setup orgmode
    require("orgmode").setup({
--    org_agenda_files = "~/orgfiles/**/*",
      org_agenda_files = "~/orgfiles/*",
      org_default_notes_file = "~/orgfiles/refile.org",
    })

    -- NOTE: If you are using nvim-treesitter with `ensure_installed = "all"` option
    -- add `org` to ignore_install
    -- require('nvim-treesitter.configs').setup({
    --   ensure_installed = 'all',
    --   ignore_install = { 'org' },
    -- })
  end,
}

Install with these plugins:

1.5. Maintenance

1.6. Troubleshooting

1.7. Observations and future direction

1.7.1. DONE init.vim and init.lua

Both files are not supported at the same time, but I can "nest" init.vim config into init.lua, so write config with that.

Here's a helpful lua-guide to get started. There's also kickstart.nvim which goes through the config. Here's vhyrro's video on undetstanding Neovim.

1.7.2. NEXT Go through the old vimrc and migrate config to init.lua

Are you excited to learn some Lisp? Yes!

Pop-quiz: How does apply work?

Answer

Syntactically, (apply f '(x0 ... xN)) = (f x0 ... xN).

[Musa: Ain't that cool? ]

That is, we can apply a function to a list of arguments!

Note that C-x C-e evaluates a Lisp form!

apply