Let’s build a plugin

Let’s try building a simple plugin; this way, we can learn by example.

A common task you have to perform when working with code is commenting out chunks of code. Let’s build a plugin that does just that. Let’s (uninspiringly) name our plugin vim-commenter.

Plugin layout

Since the Vim 8 release, there’s thankfully only one way of structuring your plugins (which is also compatible with major plugin managers, such as vim-plug, Vundle, or Pathogen). The plugins are expected to have the following directory structure:

• autoload/ lets you lazy load bits of your plugin (more on that later)
• colors/ color schemes
• compiler/ (language-specific) compiler-related functionality
• doc/ documentation
• ftdetect/ (file type-specific) file type detection settings
• ftplugin/ (file type-specific) file type-related plugin code
• indent/ (file type-specific) indentation-related settings
• plugin/ the core functionality...