Beginner Questions

[damccull]

Hello. I have a few beginner questions. If not for having already used the original kickstart.nvim, I would have had a real hard time understanding much about this one with so many extra files. Here's the questions that I think would have helped initially and which I still need to know.

1. How are the files in nvim/plugin actually loaded or included? Is this some default setting somewhere in nvim that I'm missing? I don't see anything in the provided init.lua that explicitly loads them.
2. Without 'lazy', how are these plugins loaded when needed instead of all at startup? Or is it just they all load at startup?
3. Why do plugin configs in nvim/plugin load and error out if the plugin isn't listed in the overlay? Isn't there a way to make those configs be ignored it the plugin itself doesn't exist?

[mrcjkb]

Hey 👋

How are the files in nvim/plugin actually loaded or included? Is this some default setting somewhere in nvim that I'm missing? I don't see anything in the provided init.lua that explicitly loads them.

See

• :h initialization
• :h runtimepath

Or is it just they all load at startup?

With this template, yes. I'm not an advocate for lazy-loading, as this should be the plugin authors' responsibility, not the users'.
If you want a lazy.nvim-like API to implement lazy-loading, which is agnostic of your plugin manager, I have recently released lz.n.
But I'm not sure if I want to include it in this template yet.

Why do plugin configs in nvim/plugin load and error out if the plugin isn't listed in the overlay? Isn't there a way to make those configs be ignored it the plugin itself doesn't exist?

If you want to create a derivation that ignores certain plugin configs, you can use ignoreConfigRegexes.

See also:

• README/Usage
• This example

[damccull]

Can you explain or point at an example of how to add a plugin (hopefully nix style) that isn't yet in the nixpkgs? I'm interested in using https://github.com/stevearc/conform.nvim but it doesn't seem to have a nixpkg yet. I would want to download and install it as part of the nix process that builds out the nvim derivation. Do I need to make this into a nix module somehow or is there a way to have nvim grab it and install it during the build?

[mrcjkb]

Oh, it's a plugin you're using?

If you're getting the plugin from nixpkgs, I would suggest opening an issue there.

Otherwise, you can override the plugin derivation (using overrideAttrs) or build it manually.

[damccull]

Yes, it is a plugin called 'remote-nvim'. It's not in nix-packages so I had to use the vimTools.buildVimPlugin function you recommended to make it work. Where do I learn about the overrides or build process for this plugin? Sorry for my newbiness. I'm happy to do the learning, but Nix documentation on the internet is, in my experience, difficult to find current, relevant information on weird topics like this.

[mrcjkb]

Actually, you can just add dontPatchShebangs = true; to the attrset you pass to buildVimPlugin.

[damccull]

Ah, perfect! Can you tell me where you found that? I couldn't even seem to find a location where buildVimPlugins comes from.

[mrcjkb]

buildVimPlugin is just a wrapper around stdenv.mkDerivation.

Here's the relevant documentation: https://nixos.org/manual/nixpkgs/stable/#variables-controlling-the-fixup-phase

[damccull]

That's perfect. Thank you.