NightVim

NightVim is a configuration framework for Neovim that gives you control.
Takes care of all the boilerplate you don't want to handle, and lets you write the Neovim configuration you need

Installation

User Install

Download the sysinit.lua file into your neovim config directory as init.lua

curl https://raw.githubusercontent.com/NightVim/NightVim/main/sysinit.lua --create-dirs --output ~/.config/nvim/init.lua

System Install

Check your system vimrc location with nvim --version You should see an section that looks like this

    system vimrc file: "$VIM/sysinit.vim"
    fall-back for $VIM: "/usr/local/share/nvim"

Download the sysinit.lua and .vim files into your system vimrc directory (In this case $VIM, that isn't set so /usr/local/share/nvim)

curl "https://raw.githubusercontent.com/NightVim/NightVim/main/sysinit.{lua,vim}" --create-dirs --output "/usr/local/share/nvim/sysinit.#1"

NightVim manages the boring parts of the configuration

Bootstrapping package management with Packer.nvim
LSP, Autocompletion and Snippets with Neovim LSP Client, nvim-cmp and LuaSnip (by default only set up for Lua)
Fzf-style fuzzy file finding with Telescope.nvim and telescope-fzf-native
Smarter Highlighting with Treesitter
Loading regular colorschemes and colorschemes made with Colorbuddy.nvim through a unified API
Easy to use Lua keymapping wrapper
Easily split up your configuration with protected require

Defaults

<leader>w(h|j|k|l) to switch focus between windows, as an alternative to C-w (h|j|k|l)
<leader>wq to close the current window
<leader>wsh and <leader>wsv mapped for splitting windows horizontally and vertically, respectively
<leader>nr to reload your NightVim user config, and <leader>ne to open your NightVim user config for editing
:W and :Wq to use sudo to save root-owned files
:Bquit to close a buffer while keeping your window splits and positions
Lua LSP pre-configured* to make getting started writing your Neovim config in Neovim as fast as possible

* You must manually download the sumneko lua language server and place it in your $PATH

Options that differ from regular Neovim

Search is case insensitive
Mouse is enabled in normal and visual mode
Cursorline is enabled, giving a better overview on which line you are on.
Hybrid line numbers are on, allowing for easy to figure out vim motions when navigating up and down lines, while keeping the absolute line number on the current line to easily know where in the file you are
4 space wide tabs
Pressing tab produces a hardtab rather than 4 spaces
Keep 4 lines above and below the cursor as much as possible
Focus the bottom and right window when splitting
Leader set to space

vim.o.ignorecase = true
vim.o.mouse = 'nv'
vim.o.cursorline = true
vim.o.cursorlineopt = 'screenline'
vim.o.number = true
vim.o.relativenumber = true
vim.o.tabstop = 4
vim.o.shiftwidth = 4
vim.o.expandtab = false
vim.o.scrolloff = 4
vim.o.splitbelow = true
vim.o.splitright = true
vim.g.mapleader = ' '

Function to revert to Neovim defaults coming soon

User Config Documentation

If NightVim is installed in User Mode, your user config will be in $HOME/.config/nvim/user.lua
If NightVim is installed in System Mode, your user user config is your regular neovim init.lua, located in $HOME/.config/nvim/init.lua
NightVim makes a table called night available in the global namespace.

Night Prelude

If you do not wish to prefix the NightVim functions with night. you can either manually bind them to local variables, or use the night.prelude() function
With the night.prelude function, you can optionally include a table of which functions you want export

-- manually binding to local variables
local prequire = night.prequire
-- using the full prelude
local prequire, nmap, vmap, imap, plugins, color, lsp, command, map, log, userconfig = night.prelude()
-- using part of the full prelude
local prequire, nmap = night.prelude()
-- optionally only pull nmap and imap out
local nmap, imap = night.prelude{"nmap", "imap"}

User Plugins

Adding plugins is just like how you would use packer manually, except instead of using the packer.startup function, you just use the night.plugins function.

night.plugins(function(use)
    use 'nyxkrage/henna.nvim' -- Adding a colorscheme, NightVim doesn't ship with anything out of the box
end)

Colorschemes

Switching the colorscheme is done with the night.color function and supports loading either colorbuddy.nvim colorschemes or regular vim colorschemes.

night.color('henna') -- This is a colorscheme that is built using colorbuddy.nvim

night.color('gruvbox') -- This is a regular vim colorscheme, that you would usually load with :colorscheme gruvbox

Keymappings

Theres quite a few wrappers for creating keymaps in NightVim, the ones you will mostly be using is night.nmap, night.imap or night.vmap, however just night.map is also available as a lower level wrapper.
And they all follow the same syntax, (mode)map{"<The keymap you want to bind>", ":Vim command"/function() <lua code> end, option = value ... }

-- Map <leader>km in normal mode to run :echo Ran keymap
night.nmap{'<leader>km', '<CMD>echo Ran keymap'}
-- Map Ctrl+r to a Lua function that prints "ran Ctrl+r" in insert mode only in buffer 4
night.imap{'<C-r>', function() print("ran Ctrl+r") end, buffer = 4 }

If you want to map to multiple modes you can use the night.map function

-- Map Ctrl+r in visual and normal mode to print "ran Ctrl+r"
night.map{'<C-r>', function() print("ran Ctrl+r") end, mode = { 'n', 'v' } }

Protected Require

Instead of loading modules with pcall

local has_telescope, telescope = pcall(require, "telescope")
if not has_telescope then
  vim.notify('Failed to load telescope module', vim.log.levels.ERROR)
else
    telescope.setup(...)
end

NightVim includes a smaller wrapper, night.prequire

local telescope = night.prequire'telescope'
if telescope then
    -- The telescope variable is set to the module, and loaded properly. 
    telescope.setup(...)
end

This will also print an error if the module could not be properly loaded with the location in your config file of where you called night.prequire

MORE DOCS WIP

User Config Example

vim.o.swapfile = false

local plugins, color, prequire = night.prelude{'plugins', 'color', 'prequire'}

plugins(function(use)
    use {
        'TimUntersberger/neogit',
        requires = 'nvim-lua/plenary.nvim'
    }

    use 'nyxkrage/henna.nvim'
end)

color'henna'

local neogit = prequire'neogit'
if neogit then
    neogit.setup{}
    nmap{ '<leader>gg', function() neogit.open() end }
end

FAQ

Why not use LunarVim

While LunarVim is an awesome project, NightVim and LunarVim have very different goals.
LunarVim aims to be a fully usable IDE out of the box, while NightVim aims to reduce the amount of boilerplate you need to have in your config.

Why not use Kickstart.nvim

Kickstart.nvim is an awesome learning project and I would absolutely recommend it for anyone new to configuring Neovim with Lua. It also has very different goals compared to NightVim.

The goal of this repo is not to create a neovim configuration framework

From the Kickstart.nvim repo

License

This project is licensed under the MIT License

NightVim / NightVim