Setting up Neovim and NvChad
- use
brewcommand for macOS and linux. - use
scoopcommand for windows
– Press <Spacebar> + th to open the theme selector. Select a theme and press <ENTER> or <ESC> twice to close it.
- Press
<Ctrl>+nto toggle the file navigator. (If there are no files or folders listed, it means the directory in which you launched Neovim is empty) - Press
<ENTER>to expand a folder or open a file. - Press
g?to show a list of mappings for the file navigator. Pressqto close the list. - Press
<Spacebar>+ffto open the Find Files window and press<ESC>twice to close it. - Press
<Spacebar>+chto show all the keyboard mappings. Use it to explore more features. - You will notice that some mappings start with
<leader>which is referring to the Spacebar key. Cis for theCtrl/Controlkey,Ais for theAlt/Optionkey andSis for the Shift key.
On Linux and macOS, you can find the configuration files in ~/.config/nvim/ and on Windows, you can find them in ~\AppData\Local\nvim\.
There are two critical observations:
- The files have the extension
.lua
What is Lua? Lua is a lightweight, high-level, and straightforward programming language, resembling pseudo-code and making it relatively easy to learn for developers. For these reasons, Neovim allows users to write their configuration files in Lua, and although it is optional to complete this guide, learning basic Lua is highly recommended if you plan to make more changes or tweaks on your own.
- There is primarily three key folders: core, plugins and custom All the default NvChad configurations and plugins are stored in the file init.lua (main init.lua), and the files in the core and plugins folders. These files should not be modified directly (Read this section of NvChad's documentation to understand why). Instead, all our modifications will be made inside the custom folder. This is where the magic happens.
There are only 4 important files we need to consider: overrides.lua, lspconfig.lua, mappings.lua and plugins.lua.
These 4 files are enough for us to update the language servers, edit the syntax highlighting support, modify keyboard mappings and manage plugins.
To customize the language servers and syntax highlighting, we need to update the file custom/overrides.lua.
This file consists of two main tables: M.treesitter and M.mason.
Treesitter is a plugin that provides syntax highlighting and Mason is another plugin which makes it easy to install language servers.
Let’s add syntax highlighting for Python by simply adding python to M.treesitter.
Similarly let's add pyre, which is a language server for Python, to M.mason.
Check out the full list of supported languages for Treesitter and the list of available language servers for Mason.
Your code should now look like this:
local M = {}
M.treesitter = {
ensure_installed = {
"vim",
"lua",
"html",
"css",
"javascript",
"typescript",
"tsx",
"c",
"markdown",
"markdown_inline",
"python", -- Added python syntax highlighting here
},
indent = {
enable = true,
-- disable = {
-- "python"
-- },
},
}
M.mason = {
ensure_installed = {
-- lua stuff
"lua-language-server",
"stylua",
-- web dev stuff
"css-lsp",
"html-lsp",
"typescript-language-server",
"deno",
"prettier",
-- c/cpp stuff
"clangd",
"clang-format",
-- python
"pyre", -- Added python language server here
},
}
-- git support in nvimtree
M.nvimtree = {
git = {
enable = true,
},
renderer = {
highlight_git = true,
icons = {
show = {
git = true,
},
},
},
}
return MWe now add pyre to the file custom/configs/lspconfig.lua to use the default language server capabilities.
local M = {}
local on_attach = require("plugins.configs.lspconfig").on_attach
local capabilities = require("plugins.configs.lspconfig").capabilities
local lspconfig = require "lspconfig"
-- if you just want default config for the servers then put them in a table
local servers = { "html", "cssls", "pyre" } -- Add pyre language server
for _, lsp in ipairs(servers) do
lspconfig[lsp].setup {
on_attach = on_attach,
capabilities = capabilities,
}
end
--Plugins essentially expand Neovim’s capabilities by introducing additional features and functionalities.
To manage plugins, we need to update the file custom/plugins.lua.
Following the installation instructions from the plugins’ documentation, we need to make the following changes to our plugins.lua file:
local overrides = require("custom.configs.overrides")
---@type NvPluginSpec[]
local plugins = {
-- Override plugin definition options
{
"neovim/nvim-lspconfig",
dependencies = {
-- format & linting
{
"jose-elias-alvarez/null-ls.nvim",
config = function()
require "custom.configs.null-ls"
end,
},
},
config = function()
require "plugins.configs.lspconfig"
require "custom.configs.lspconfig"
end, -- Override to setup mason-lspconfig
},
-- override plugin configs
{
"williamboman/mason.nvim",
opts = overrides.mason
},
{
"nvim-treesitter/nvim-treesitter",
opts = overrides.treesitter,
},
{
"nvim-tree/nvim-tree.lua",
opts = overrides.nvimtree,
},
-- Install a plugin
{
"max397574/better-escape.nvim",
event = "InsertEnter",
config = function()
require("better_escape").setup()
end,
},
-- lightspeed
{
"ggandor/lightspeed.nvim",
event = 'VeryLazy',
},
-- nvim-surround
{
"kylechui/nvim-surround",
version = "*", -- Use for stability; omit to use `main` branch for the latest features
event = "VeryLazy",
config = function()
require("nvim-surround").setup({})
end
},
-- To make a plugin not be loaded
-- {
-- "NvChad/nvim-colorizer.lua",
-- enabled = false
-- },
-- All NvChad plugins are lazy-loaded by default
-- For a plugin to be loaded, you will need to set either `ft`, `cmd`, `keys`, `event`, or set `lazy = false`
-- If you want a plugin to load on startup, add `lazy = false` to a plugin spec, for example
-- {
-- "mg979/vim-visual-multi",
-- lazy = false,
-- }
}
return plugins