neovim/README.md

Documentation | Chat | Twitter

Neovim is a project that seeks to aggressively refactor Vim in order to:

• Simplify maintenance and encourage contributions
• Split the work between multiple developers
• Enable advanced UIs without modifications to the core
• Maximize extensibility

See the Introduction wiki page and Roadmap for more information.

Features

• Modern GUIs
• API access from any language including C/C++, C#, Clojure, D, Elixir, Go, Haskell, Java, JavaScript/Node.js, Julia, Lisp, Lua, Perl, Python, Racket, Ruby, Rust
• Embedded, scriptable terminal emulator
• Asynchronous job control
• Shared data (shada) among multiple editor instances
• XDG base directories support
• Compatible with most Vim plugins, including Ruby and Python plugins

See :help nvim-features for the full list!

Install from package

Pre-built packages for Windows, macOS, and Linux are found on the Releases page.

Managed packages are in Homebrew, Debian, Ubuntu, Fedora, Arch Linux, Gentoo, and more!

Install from source

See the Building Neovim wiki page for details.

The build is CMake-based, but a Makefile is provided as a convenience. After installing the dependencies, run the following command.

make CMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=RelWithDebInfo
sudo make install

To install to a non-default location:

make CMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX=/full/path/
make install

To inspect the build, these CMake features are useful:

• cmake --build build --target help lists all build targets.
• build/CMakeCache.txt (or cmake -LAH build/) contains the resolved values of all CMake variables.
• build/compile_commands.json shows the full compiler invocations for each translation unit.

Transitioning from Vim

See :help nvim-from-vim for instructions.

Project layout

├─ ci/              build automation
├─ cmake/           build scripts
├─ runtime/         user plugins/docs
├─ src/nvim/        application source code (see src/nvim/README.md)
│  ├─ api/          API subsystem
│  ├─ eval/         VimL subsystem
│  ├─ event/        event-loop subsystem
│  ├─ generators/   code generation (pre-compilation)
│  ├─ lib/          generic data structures
│  ├─ lua/          Lua subsystem
│  ├─ msgpack_rpc/  RPC subsystem
│  ├─ os/           low-level platform code
│  └─ tui/          built-in UI
├─ third-party/     CMake subproject to build dependencies
└─ test/            tests (see test/README.md)

License

Neovim contributions since b17d96 are licensed under the Apache 2.0 license, except for contributions copied from Vim (identified by the vim-patch token). See LICENSE for details.

Vim is Charityware.  You can use and copy it as much as you like, but you are
encouraged to make a donation for needy children in Uganda.  Please see the
kcc section of the vim docs or visit the ICCF web site, available at these URLs:

        http://iccf-holland.org/
        http://www.vim.org/iccf/
        http://www.iccf.nl/

You can also sponsor the development of Vim.  Vim sponsors can vote for
features.  The money goes to Uganda anyway.