Neovim on Spoljarevic's Knowledgebase

Introduction

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

What is lazy.nvim?

lazy.nvim is a plugin manager for Neovim. It handles cloning, updating, and lazy-loading plugins from a set of declarative “specs” — Lua tables that say which plugin to install, what triggers it to load (a command, a keymap, a filetype, an event), and how to configure it once loaded.

What this is

A Neovim configuration written entirely from scratch on top of lazy.nvim — every option, keymap, and plugin spec here was written by hand, plugin by plugin. It is not the LazyVim distribution, and doesn’t depend on it. Distributions like LazyVim or kickstart.nvim ship pre-built, opinionated defaults (LSP presets via nvim-lspconfig’s setup functions, a formatter framework, a fixed plugin set); this config instead wires each piece directly, which means more to write, but nothing hidden behind a distribution’s abstractions.

Usage

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Deployment

There’s no separate install step for this config specifically — it’s deployed as part of the Dotfiles monorepo. ~/.config is a symlink to the root of that repository, so nvim/ inside it automatically becomes ~/.config/nvim, which is where Neovim looks for its config by default.

Note

This means editing ~/.config/nvim/lua/plugins/foo.lua and editing this repo’s nvim/lua/plugins/foo.lua are the same file.

First launch

nvim

On the very first run, lua/config/lazy.lua detects that lazy.nvim itself isn’t installed yet, clones it into Neovim’s data directory, and then installs every plugin declared under lua/plugins/*.lua. Subsequent launches just load already-installed plugins.

Code Explanation

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Load order

init.lua is four requires, executed in order:

require("config.options")
require("config.lazy")
require("config.keymaps")
require("config.autocmds")

config/options.lua — plain vim.o.* settings (line numbers, relative numbers, mouse support, split direction, 2-space indentation, etc). No plugins involved.
config/lazy.lua — bootstraps lazy.nvim itself: if it isn’t already cloned into Neovim’s data directory, git clones it, prepends it to the runtimepath, then calls require("lazy").setup("plugins", { change_detection = { notify = false } }). That call auto-discovers and loads every spec file under lua/plugins/*.lua — adding a new plugin is just adding a new file there, no manual registration step.
config/keymaps.lua — global keymaps, centralized here rather than scattered per-plugin file (see Usage for the full table).
config/autocmds.lua — currently just the format-on-save autocmd.

Plugin spec files

Each file under lua/plugins/ returns a lazy.nvim spec table (or a list of tables), and filenames map roughly 1:1 to the plugin they configure:

FAQ

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Why not just use LazyVim or kickstart.nvim?

This config predates/deliberately avoids adopting a distribution. Writing every option, keymap, and plugin spec by hand keeps each piece traceable to a single file instead of hidden behind a distribution’s abstractions and defaults — at the cost of not getting features “for free.” See Introduction for the full reasoning.

Why hand-roll LSP instead of using `nvim-lspconfig`’s `setup{}` presets?

Same reasoning as above, applied specifically to LSP: lua/plugins/lsp.lua calls vim.lsp.start() directly through a small setup_lsp() helper instead of require("lspconfig").<server>.setup{}. It also means the executable-existence guard (vim.fn.executable(...)) is explicit and visible, rather than depending on nvim-lspconfig’s own defaults. See Code Explanation for the code.

Neovim on Spoljarevic's Knowledgebase

Introduction

What is lazy.nvim?

What this is

Usage

Deployment

First launch

Code Explanation

Load order

Plugin spec files

FAQ

Why not just use LazyVim or kickstart.nvim?

Why hand-roll LSP instead of using nvim-lspconfig’s setup{} presets?

Why hand-roll LSP instead of using `nvim-lspconfig`’s `setup{}` presets?