Bob

Struggle to keep your Neovim versions in check? Bob provides an easy way to install and switch versions on any system!

Bob is a cross-platform and easy-to-use Neovim version manager, allowing for easy switching between versions right from the command line.

🌟 Showcase

🔔 Notices

2022-10-29: Moved bob's symbolic link and downloads folder on macos from /Users/user/Library/Application Support to ~/.local/share please make sure to move all of your downloads to the new folder, run bob use <your desired version> and update your PATH
2023-02-13: Bob has recently switched to using a proxy executable for running Neovim executables. To switch from the old method that Bob used, follow these steps:
1. Remove the current Neovim path from your global $PATH environment variable.
2. Delete the following directory: On Unix: ~/.local/share/neovim On Windows: C:\Users\<username>\AppData\Local\neovim
Secondly the name of the downloads directory property in the configuration file has changed. Please refer to the updated list of properties for the new name.

📦 Requirements

Make sure you don't have Neovim already installed via other ways e.g. a package manager.

Build prerequisites

Building bob

Make sure rustup is installed.

Building Neovim

For further information refer to the Neovim wiki.

All platforms

CMake
Git

Windows

Visual Studio Build Tools with C++ extension pack

Unix

Clang or GCC

MacOS note: follow these instructions

🔧 Installation

Install from releases

Download bob-{platform}-x86_64.zip
Unzip it
Run it with bob

Install from AUR

Install the bob or bob-bin package with an AUR helper e.g. paru: paru -S bob
Run it with bob

Install from source

cargo install --git https://github.com/MordechaiHadad/bob.git
Run bob with bob

Install from crates.io

cargo install bob-nvim
Run bob with bob

❓ Usage

A version-string can either be vx.x.x or x.x.x examples: v0.6.1 and 0.6.0

bob use |nightly|stable|<version-string>|<commit-hash>|

Switch to the specified version, will auto-invoke install command if the version is not installed already.

bob install |nightly|stable|<version-string>|<commit-hash>|

Install the specified version, can also be used to update out-of-date nightly version.

bob sync

If Config::sync_version_file_path is set, the version in that file will be parsed and installed.

bob uninstall |nightly|stable|<version-string>|<commit-hash>|

Uninstall the specified version.

bob rollback

Rollback to an existing nightly rollback

bob erase

Erase any change bob ever made including Neovim installation, Neovim version downloads and registry changes.

bob list

List all installed and used versions.

⚙ Configuration

This section is a bit more advanced and thus the user will have to do the work himself since bob doesn't do that.

Bob's configuration file will have to be in config_dir/bob/config.json, to be more specific:

On Linux

/home/user/.config/bob/config.json

On Windows

C:\Users\user\AppData\Roaming\bob\config.json

On MacOS

/Users/user/Library/Application Support/bob/config.json

Syntax

Property	Description	Default Value
enable_nightly_info	Will show new commits associated with new nightly release if enabled	`true`
downloads_location	The folder in which neovim versions will be downloaded to, bob will error if this option is specified but the folder doesn't exist	unix: `/home/<username>/.local/share/bob`, windows: `C:\Users\<username>\AppData\Local\bob`
installation_location	The path in which the proxied neovim installation will be located in	unix: `/home/<username>/.local/share/bob/nvim-bin`, windows: `C:\Users\<username>\AppData\Local\bob\nvim-bin`
version_sync_file_location	The path to a file that will hold the neovim version string, useful for config version tracking, bob will error if the specified file is not a valid file path	`Disabled by default`
rollback_limit	The amount of rollbacks before bob starts to delete older ones, can be up to 225	`3`

Example

// /home/user/.config/bob/config.json
{
  "enable_nightly_info": true, // Will show new commits associated with new nightly release if enabled
  "downloads_location": "$HOME/.local/share/bob", // The folder in which neovim versions will be installed too, bob will error if this option is specified but the folder doesn't exist
  "installation_location": "/home/user/.local/share/bob/nvim-bin", // The path in which the used neovim version will be located in
  "version_sync_file_location": "/home/user/.config/nvim/nvim.version", // The path to a file that will hold the neovim version string, useful for config version tracking, bob will error if the specified file is not a valid file path
  "rollback_limit": 3 // The amount of rollbacks before bob starts to delete older ones, can be up to 225
}