Re: Downloading Plugins

On 17:11 Thu 28 Aug , tooth pik wrote:
> On Thu, Aug 28, 2014 at 10:05:50AM -0700, Robert Cressman wrote:
> > I have read several pages of articles/explanations/etc. on downloading
> > plugins. Most involve Github.com. and provide the command to do so.
>
> > As a novice, what I don't find, or understand, is where the "Git clone
> > git://github.com/etc./etc." gets typed to accomplish this task. Is it
> > in Vim, Git Bash, the command line of the system prompt??
>
> > Any help would be appreciated. PLEASE remember, your explaining to a
> > Vim novice who is struggling to comprehend all the "jargon" used by
> > the experienced users!
>
> To a novice I would recommend they stay way from plugins entirely until
> they have a firm grasp of how vim works and are comfortable with it --
> plugins are a very common cause of unexpected and undocumented behavior,
> which gets harder to debug the more of them you have.
>
> Then, if there is some plugin you feel compelled to experiment with even
> after having been warned, the best place for novices to get plugins is
> from the vim site: http://www.vim.org, where, for the vast majority of
> plugins (where they are referred to as "scripts") installation is a
> simple matter of dropping the item on your ~/.vim path and unpacking it.
>
> If you still insist on cloning someone's git workspace, the git commands
> are for the system prompt, but you have been warned.
>
> --
> _|_ _ __|_|_ ._ o|
> |_(_)(_)|_| ||_)||<

The ~/.vim directory has a special structure that is good to know: for
example filetype scripts are should be placed under ~/.vim/ftplugin,
colorscheme scripts under ~/.vim/colors, plugins ~/.vim/plugin. You can
read about them all from :help 'rtp'.

A plugin distributed on vim.org/github/... might (and often has) files
which land in all different parts of ~/.vim. For example documentation
file should be put under ~/.vim/doc/, ... . Often it is enough to
unpack tha gzip/tar/... in your ~/.vim directory; but it is good to
check what is the directory structure of the downloaded archive.

As for using git and grabbing plugins directly from github, this is
quite ease, but requires from you first to install/understand pathogen
plugin (and to know what :help 'rtp' is about) or vim addon manager
(though setting it up might be more difficult for beginners).

Remember that :help and :helpgrep are your first friends - after all
everything is documented, well almost (for example that this ":::::ls"
will work I think it isn't, though I might be wrong).

Best regards,
Marcin