Installing plugins

This chapter will start by introducing Vim plugins. Plugin management is a rather broad subject (and it’s covered in Chapter 3, Follow the Leader – Plugin Management, as well), but we’re starting out with just a few plugins, so we won’t have to worry ourselves with that topic yet.

First, let’s go through the one-time setup:

1. You’ll need to create a directory to store plugins. Execute the following on the command line:

   $ mkdir -p ~/.vim/pack/plugins/start

For Windows users

If you’re using GVim under Windows, you’ll have to create the vimfiles directory under your user folder (usually C:\Users\<username>), and then create pack\plugins\start folders inside of it.

2. You’ll want to tell Vim to load documentation for each plugin, as it doesn’t do so automatically. For that, add the following line to your ~/.vimrc file:

       silent! helptags ALL  ...