
Newsletter #7 - Summer of Road - lwakefield
https://neovim.io/news/2016/11/
======
virtualwhys
For better or worse they awoke the sleeping giant[1]. Curious to see how
things play out with the fork (i.e. will vim users stay put or move on to
neovim in the coming months/years).

[1]
[https://github.com/vim/vim/graphs/contributors](https://github.com/vim/vim/graphs/contributors)

~~~
rrradical
I'm not sure how it could be 'for worse'? Even Neovim benefits from the uptick
in Vim patches, because they actually merge many of them into Neovim. So it
seems like it can only be a good thing. Better editors for everyone.

~~~
nilved
That's one way it could play out, but that's not the way it did play out. Vim
ate Neovim's lunch because they took so long to create a release that Vim was
able to copy their best features. Worse yet, they did this in a way that is
not compatible with Neovim. There is a chasm between Vim and Neovim that is
growing, and the incentive to cross it is shrinking.

As someone who has watched closely Neovim's development since its
announcement, and used it as my daily text editor for literal years, I feel
sad to say that it is early-stage vapourware. They kicked vim into action,
then vim kicked them out of it.

~~~
tommyallen
Vim didn't eat Neovim's lunch. It made its own lunch. Vim8's async feature is
a copy only in name. Comparing both async APIs, I'm almost certain that Vim8's
was added spitefully. It's just so obtuse compared to Neovim's.

~~~
nilved
Well, that one is the one people are using. Now that the question among plugin
developers is "Vim or Neovim?" which one do you think they will choose? It's
totally possible that Neovim will need to adopt Vim's inferior API for
compatibility reasons, like they're doing with the VimL<->Lua compatibility
layer.

~~~
tommyallen
The same question can be asked about Vim 7.4 and Vim 8.0. Which should a
plugin developer choose to support? I'm a plugin developer and choose to
support any version that has the right features for what I'm accomplishing.
For most things, there isn't anything special that needs to be done.

------
xwvvvvwx
Slow, incremental, consistent, disciplined hard work leads to amazing results.

Congratulations and huge thanks to the maintainers, I use neovim every day and
love it.

~~~
chairmanwow
I read that article and didn't get a good handle on any features that would
motivate a transition from Vim. Any links you could provide?

~~~
brotherjerky
For me, I like:

\- Neomake (
[https://github.com/neomake/neomake](https://github.com/neomake/neomake) )
which I use for async linting. I know this is now working in Vim 8, but I've
been using Neovim for a while and this was exclusive for a while.

\- Vim-test ( [https://github.com/janko-m/vim-
test](https://github.com/janko-m/vim-test) ) uses `:term` for running your
tests from within vim -- this is most useful because I have a shortcut to test
from current editing file, etc. I know this is also possible in vim now.

\- Mapping Meta keys in terminal -- opens up a bunch more shortcuts that
weren't available before

\- `inccommand` This I believe is only in neovim, and likely not enough for
anyone to switch for

Cons: \- Not in distros, gotta install manually via their PPA

~~~
blueyed
Thanks for the link to Neomake - Neovim is still a first class citizen for it,
and it was a pain to get it working on Vim (and several bugs for Vim have been
filed, debugged and fixed in this process).

~~~
brotherjerky
Thanks for making Neomake!

------
chappi42
It's a joy to read such a polite newsletter. Friendly towards to original
source. Friendly and open as a community. Everythings seems well organized and
distributed. Well done!

Also thanks a lot for the tool, I use neovim almost daily.

------
brotherjerky
As a daily neovim user, love the progress! Here's to a great 2017!

------
michaelmior
Fantastic work by the Neovim folks as usual. However, this sentence stuck out
to me

> The API should only grow, not break

This seems to ensure eventual bloat.

------
ape4
Is neovim packaged for distros?

~~~
blueyed
Arch has it:
[https://www.archlinux.org/packages/?name=neovim](https://www.archlinux.org/packages/?name=neovim)
The -git version in AUR: [https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/neovim-
git/](https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/neovim-git/).

