Issue #3 – Better Late Than Never

http://neovim.org/news/2014/sept/

by bpierre • 12 years ago

344 44 12 years ago

scrollaway• 12 years ago

Reading about neovim is very cool. It's nice to see such an actively beloved open source project which is all about modernizing an old tool (and that means 90% "backend" stuff), and it's a big breath of fresh air to see how well organized they are.

xienze• 12 years ago

Agreed. When the initial fundraising campaign was happening I figured it was just going to fizzle out eventually when the guy driving it got bored. Boy was I wrong... this is a seriously organized effort.

aktau• 12 years ago

Very glad you guys feel that way! To anyone at all interested and having some free time, feel free to see if you can contribute something at https://github.com/neovim/neovim. Anyone is welcome to help out.

davis2• 12 years ago

aktau (commented below), Justin Keyes, and obviously Thiago are certainly driving a ton of the development. The amount of time they put into the Issue tracker and coding blows me away. It's all really impressive and they definitely have set the tone for the project.

aktau: https://github.com/aktau

Justin: https://github.com/justinmk

Thiago: https://github.com/tarruda

lbradstreet2• 12 years ago

I am seriously glad that this is a thing. I donated after the original bountysource, and seeing the momentum I may just donate again.

lbradstreet2• 12 years ago

Addendum: if it weren't for Tim Pope and his Vimscript mastery, I would already be using emacs in Evil mode.

SeoxyS• 12 years ago

+1. Tim Pope is the best. Neovim looks like it's shaping up to be the best, too.

pcmonk• 12 years ago

I love how they're also contributing upstream to libuv. This is how you do an open source, community-focused project.

tarruda3• 12 years ago

Also, There have been some contributions to msgpack-c:

- https://github.com/msgpack/msgpack-c/pull/84

- https://github.com/msgpack/msgpack-c/pull/109

- https://github.com/msgpack/msgpack-c/pull/113

- https://github.com/msgpack/msgpack-c/pull/118

phireph0x• 12 years ago

As a vim user for many years, I'm also glad to see this project take off, and will give it a spin soon.

Just curious, how is this project being received by Bram Moolenaar, the creator (and BDFL I believe) of vim? ... Just found an answer https://groups.google.com/forum/m/#!topic/vim_dev/x0BF9Y0Uby...

farresito• 12 years ago

Unfortunately, it's been a few months since he last wrote that answer. Would be great to hear what he thinks about it now. I don't think anyone expected such success (based on what they have accomplished so far in terms of development).

oblio• 12 years ago

With a bit of luck we'll have a gcc/egcs situation (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU_Compiler_Collection#History).

Basically GCC was falling behind, a fork called EGCS was a lot better after a while and at a certain point GNU just dropped the old GCC and adopted EGCS as the official GCC.

Of course, Neovim first has to make a release for this to happen. And Bram has to let go of the legacy platforms (sorry Amiga!). He can support them via older Vim versions, I don't think it would be a problem for anybody...

pestaa• 12 years ago

I'm really looking forward to seeing neovim make it possible to put it in a nice GUI. I know it's an application that meant to be used with the keyboard, but gVim always refuses to behave in maximized windows, doesn't handle random window widths, etc. Is there a good workaround while this dream is coming true?

yepguy2• 12 years ago

Reading through the Github proposal for Go plugin integration, I'm pretty confused about Neovim's plugin architecture. I had thought that Neovim's plugins would be language agnostic, with external processes communicating with Neovim using msgpack-rpc (presumably paired with some method of telling Neovim to start those processes).

However, it looks like the proposal for Go integration is very much Go-specific, following the example set by Python-specific integration code. This makes me significantly less excited about Neovim's plugin architecture, since it now seems to me like every language may need support to be manually added to Neovim anyway. What's going on here?

banachtarski2• 12 years ago

Is that not how it works?

https://github.com/neovim/neovim/wiki/Plugin-UI-architecture

fmoralesc3• 12 years ago

No, the architecture is still pretty much language agnostic. My `providers` branch[1] generalizes the python integration, for example. I discussed the possibility of plugins building on this to provide the equivalent functionality to the current python implementation.

In regards to the Go integration, it's been decided it would be better to have a host like in the case of the python plugin, but the main rationale for that is not to create too many co-processes.

[1] https://github.com/fmoralesc/neovim/tree/providers

yepguy2• 12 years ago

Okay, it sounds like my fears are unfounded, but I still don't really understand it. What is a host in this context?

I know that the plugin API is still in flux, but I really wish it was documented anyway. Actually, I'm not even sure how anyone was even able to start coding something like this without a design doc existing first.

sciurus• 12 years ago

Even though the plugins communicate over msgpack-rpc, there needs to be integration to support the best way of finding and executing them. There's a lot of debate in the discussion between a process-per-plugin approach like you assumed (and like the proposed go plugin interface implements) and a plugin-host approach where a single process runs all of a given language's plugins (like the python plugin interface implements).

hackuser• 12 years ago

Most importantly, thank you Bram Moolenaar! Vim is the probably my most productive tool and it's certainly my favorite.

If you donated to Neovim, consider also donating to Bram's charity.[1] All of us who have benefited so much, and for free, from Bram's efforts owe him thanks, respect and much more.

[1] http://iccf-holland.org/

(I'm a satisfied Vim user and see no need for any major revision. Perhaps others with different needs feel differently, and it has been discussed before: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7287668 )

unclebunkers• 12 years ago

Just curious why no love for ol Bill Joy?

fritzo• 12 years ago

And Tim Thompson

famblycat• 12 years ago

This thread is a good example of why the policy requiring that a post title must match the article title doesn't always work.

The title is okay within the context of the site it's on, but it's completely nonsensical on its own without that context.

davis2• 12 years ago

It used to have Neovim in the title... I'm not quite sure why a mod would remove that.

banachtarski2• 12 years ago

Is there any way to link to neovim as a C library instead of using the messaging protocol? Also, where is the documentation of the protocol? I wasn't able to find it after a few minutes of browsing.

RexRollman2• 12 years ago

Totally off topic but this reminds me that I need to see if I can figure out how to get Nvi to compile on OS X Mavericks. I know, I know, but it has a special place in my heart because it was the first version of Vi that I ever used.

saidajigumi• 12 years ago

The project seems intent on keeping the build and distribution processes up to date along with the evolving codebase. For example, you can install now via Homebrew:

    brew install --HEAD https://raw.github.com/neovim/neovim/master/neovim.rb

From there, it's not going to be difficult to get a build from your own clone up and running.

aeosynth• 12 years ago

nvi is a reimplementation of vi, and is unrelated to neovim, a refactoring of vim

bch• 12 years ago

Use NetBSDs pkgsrc: http://www.pkgsrc.org

elwell• 12 years ago

What's the equivalent of Newvim for Emacs? I had hopes for Deuce [0], but it seems stagnant.

[0] https://github.com/hraberg/deuce "Emacs under Clojure"

mwfogleman• 12 years ago

Not quite the same, but I am excited about Emacs adopting Git. I think that'll be a major boon to its development.

Avshalom• 12 years ago

The GuileEmacs project probably.

Crito• 12 years ago

The GuileEmacs project never really getting off the ground with much momentum is probably the only reason I still use Vim. ELisp just kills any motivation I have to 'make emacs my own'.

edeion• 12 years ago

There was Climacs http://common-lisp.net/project/climacs/ which aimed at re-implementing emacs in Common Lisp.

varkson• 12 years ago

If they can make Vim feel more modern and allow plugins to integrate better, I'd be very very happy to move to this software.

atdt• 12 years ago

Kudos for keeping up the commitment to publish regular updates. The newsletter gives the whole project a feeling of momentum and integrity.

TheSoftwareGuy2• 12 years ago

I haven't been keeping up with neovim, but does it completely freak the fuck out whenever I forget I have caps lock on the way that vim does?

TheSoftwareGuy2• 12 years ago

I seem to be getting downvoted, not really sure why.

cranium• 12 years ago

:x == :wq

(I love conciseness.)

Issue #3 – Better Late Than Never

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