Add Emacs Evil functionality to the minibuffer

gistfile1.txt

     ;; option for enabling vi keys in the minibuffer
     ;; Addresses evil-core.el:163 TODO

     (mapcar (lambda (keymap)
	       (evil-define-key 'insert (eval keymap) [escape] 'abort-recursive-edit)
	       (evil-define-key 'normal (eval keymap) [escape] 'abort-recursive-edit)
	       (evil-define-key 'insert (eval keymap) [return] 'exit-minibuffer)
	       (evil-define-key 'normal (eval keymap) [return] 'exit-minibuffer)
	       (evil-define-key 'insert (eval keymap) "\C-t" 'evil-normal-state)
)
             ;; https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/manual/html_node/elisp/
	     ;; Text-from-Minibuffer.html#Definition of minibuffer-local-map
	     '(minibuffer-local-map
	       minibuffer-local-ns-map
	       minibuffer-local-completion-map
	       minibuffer-local-must-match-map
	       minibuffer-local-isearch-map))

     (add-hook 'minibuffer-setup-hook 
     	       '(lambda () 
     		  (set (make-local-variable 'evil-echo-state) nil)
		  ;; (evil-set-initial-state 'mode 'insert) is the evil-proper
		  ;; way to do this, but the minibuffer doesn't have a mode.
		  ;; The alternative is to create a minibuffer mode (here), but
		  ;; then it may conflict with other packages' if they do the same.
		  (evil-insert 1)))

Thanks, after quite a bit of searching and my own tries, this works like a charm! The only change I made is to retain ESC for exiting insert-mode (removing lines 5,6,9) -- these fingers are too old to learn a new binding for that.