On Jun 13, 2012, at 11:51 AM, Tim Gray wrote: > On Jun 13, 2012 at 11:06 AM -0400, Eric Weir wrote: >> You can tweak where vim-addon-manager installs plugins---and is itself >> installed. I have mine going into ~\. > > You are more than welcome to do that, but other versions of vim are not going > to look there by default... Is ~/ really better than ~/.vim/?
I don't remember my specific reason for putting it there. I think at the time---and definitely so recently---I found myself going to the vim-addons folder frequently and just wanted it at the top level of ~\. I don't think it creates any problems for vim in finding plugins. When you change the location of the vim-addons folder, vam updates the runtime path for plugins to that location. That said, your explanations below of the variety of ways ~\.vim can be/is used is causing me to rethink my decision. I imagine it would help me to stay current with the state of ~\.vim. And keeping everything in the home folder related to vim in one place makes sense, too. If I make the change, a minor change to the install path in my vam setup in my .vimrc will result in the paths to all my plugins being updated to the new location. >> Yes, it was taking a closer look at the MacVim package than had previously >> that led me to ask whether I needed a separate installation. It appears I >> don't. In any case I don't have it. It's not in \usr\local\bin. > > If you are running OS X, I would be shocked if you didn't have vim at > /usr/bin/vim, with the site wide files for the copy of vim at /usr/share/vim. > To repeat, the site wide files are separate from your user files. Don't > install plugins into the site wide file location. The stuff in .vim IS NOT a > separate installation. The stuff you find in > /Applications/MacVim.app/Contents/Resources/vim/runtime is more or less > mirrored at /usr/share/vim/vim73. Those two sets of files ARE separate > installations of vim; the first corresponding to MacVim, the second to > default OS X. The exact path (/usr/share/vim/vim73) might be different if > you are running an older version of OS X. 10.5 for example didn't have Vim > 7.3, it had 7.2, so the location for runtime files was /usr/share/vim/vim72. My mistake. I looked in \usr\local\bin. In fact, there is an installation in \usr\bin and the files for it are at \usr\share\vim and it is vim72. My Mac was purchased in late 2009, but I'm running snow leopard, and will probably get a new machine later this summer. [Dreading the transition. One the one hand, I don't want to have to start from scratch. On the other hand, imagine I've thrown more than a few wrenches into the gears of the system in the last couple years, and it would be nice to get free of them.] > It's only 'superfluous' for you because you are storing your plugins in a > nonstandard location and not using some of the other features that make use > of .vim. Or maybe you are using some of those features but just don't > realize it. And if you wanted to add ANYTHING customized, outside of what > vim-addon-manager provides, you'd have to put it in ~/.vim/ (unless you > really reconfigured things). For example, if you add terms to the speller > dictionary, they go in ~/.vim/spell. If you use the session.vim plugin to > save sessions, it saves it's files in ~/.vim/session. Tweaked color themes > go in ~/.vim/colors. Snipmate looks for snippets in ~/.vim/snippets. I > could go on, but I think you understand. The way I use vim, there are > certain settings and scripts that aren't provided by any existing plugins, > and those go into ~/.vim, because that's where Vim looks for such things. > > MacVim expects to find things in ~/.vim, IF you choose to use those > capabilities. There's nothing from stopping someone from running plain > vanilla (Mac)Vim with no .vimrc or plugins or files in the ~/.vim folder, but > the program still looks there for stuff. If you do decide to use those > features, Vim and most plugins expect to store and find things in .vim. > Notice that vim-addon-manager defaults to ~/.vim/vim-addons? You had to > change it to make it use another folder. vim-addon-manager is a very well > written plugin where the option to use a different folder has been expose to > the end user - a lot of plugins don't provide that. Again, comments all well-taken. Very likely I will collect all my vim-related stuff into ~\.vim as a way to keep myself better informed about its state. Thanks very much for your clear and detailed responses. Sincerely, ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Eric Weir Decatur, GA eew...@bellsouth.net "What does it mean...that the world is so beautiful?" - Mary Oliver -- You received this message from the "vim_mac" maillist. Do not top-post! Type your reply below the text you are replying to. For more information, visit http://www.vim.org/maillist.php
