Portable-vim

pvim, AKA seanvim, is an AllInOne-directory Neovim wrapper.

pvim will download the latest Neovim appimage and contain your config and plugins to within the download directory. This should work on any linux computer that can run an appimage, and can be downloaded from any computer that has git and curl.

pvim now overrides where neovim sees the standard paths. This should work for any plugin manager, if yours doesn't work open an issue and I will see what I can do. If you find this breaks a tool that you like to call from neovim, I'll try to fix that too.

Installation

Clone pvim to whatever location you wish then add it to your path.

git clone https://github.com/RoryNesbitt/pvim
git clone <YOURCONFIG> pvim/config
ln -s "$(pwd)/pvim/pvim" "~/.local/bin/pvim"

Finding Neovim

On running pvim, it will first look for the Neovim appimage in the pvim directory, if it is not there it will check if nvim is in path, if neither are available it will download the latest appimage.
If you would rather use the appimage than the current installed version, you can force it's use with -f or specify an appimage location with -i <appimage>.

Updating

You can then use pvim -u to update pvim itself, your config (if it is a git repo) and the appimage (if not using -i).

Your Config

pvim should run any config without changes, you no longer need to include a check in your bootstrapper. If you ever want to check if you are running in pvim use os.getenv("pvim").

Why change stdpath?

With the release of 0.12 and vim.pack I wanted to support users that are now using that, which meant I needed to start doing so myself. I quickly discovered that although I can change packpath that will only change where neovim looks for the plugins, not where it installs them.

Previously I have always avoided changing standard paths as I don't want to break any external calls you make from neovim, I think overriding vim.fn.stdpath is a fair compromise.

ToDo

• Check the commands actually work
• Thank the neovim matrix guys
• improve the README
• improve the update-command to update your config as well as the appimage
• Fix that one error from packer Can't open file /path/to/manifest for writing
• Add windows compatibility (in the lua, no pvim.bat yet)
• Add pvim.bat
• Remove the PackerCompile workaround, or at least make it nicer
• support init.vim (Or no init)
• find other outside files that Neovim uses (e.g. undo directory)
• Add mason.nvim installation directory
• Support vim.pack (and potentially all plugin managers implicitly)