
NeoVim 0.2.0 released - eugene_pirogov
https://github.com/neovim/neovim/releases/tag/v0.2.0
======
fcanela
Major version can make someone think nvim is still unstable. My experience is
the opposite.

I have being using it for 2-4 years (can't remember exactly) and got the same
0 problems I run into Vim. Earlier versions required you to recompile NeoVim
to enable new features for plugins.

Yesterday I installed NeoVim in my new laptop and it was a smooth experience:
Installed it using Ubuntu package manager, installed Vim-Plug for managing
plugins, copied my old init.vim (or .vimrc), run vim and everything in order.

I am really happy with NeoVim. I faced no problem with it that Vim could not
resolve but I know the insides being a better ecosystem for core and plugins
developers, so I will stick with it.

~~~
dmos62
I tried jumping boat to nvim something like a year ago. One of my plugins ran
into an issue, so I came back. A better question for us "old-vimers" is not
"is nvim stable, because I'd like something modernized", but rather "what does
nvim have that vim doesnt". I'm actually asking. My short glance led me to
believe that it's got two things going for it: a) smoother interop with other
"modern" tools b) cleaned up codebase.

I'm using the word "modern" in a derogatory fashion to underline that we often
mistake new for good.

~~~
placeybordeaux
The major reason I use neovim is because with the addition of :terminal
command I no longer need to remember tmux commands and with the add-on neoterm
I have a one button command to send the current selection (or line) to
whatever terminal I please.

This means that when developing code in any language that has a REPL I can
test it out as I develop line by line.

~~~
yamaneko
I've been looking for something like this in vim for a while (something like
Emacs + ESS). I've found a few plugins and workarounds using tmux, but nothing
as smooth as you said. I'll try it out.

------
ptero
I have been using Vim as my primary editor for many years and am happy with
it. People I know who use developer editors are split between Vim and Emacs.
Neovim usage is minimal. Why? It is an honest question.

I see developers of the _editor_ happy, which is a good thing, but IMO to get
more users NV must show why it is better from a user perspective -- have
several demos on the powerful things easily achieved with NV that are painful
with Vim (via plugins is OK).

If NV devs can do this, it will go far. If not, then the case for an upgrade
hasn't been made yet for most users. My 2c.

~~~
empath75
The simple answer is probably the correct one. It's not included by default in
any distributions.

~~~
cosarara97
Some distros do have it in the official repos
[https://github.com/neovim/neovim/wiki/Installing-
Neovim](https://github.com/neovim/neovim/wiki/Installing-Neovim)

~~~
executesorder66
Yes, but it is not installed as the default text editor. Unlike vi/vim/nano

~~~
cosarara97
The default is usually vi or nano, not full vim. So installing vim or neovim
should take about the same effort.

~~~
vopi
In what distros? Ubuntu comes with vim.

~~~
cryptarch
Debian Stable (without a DE) only comes with nano AFAIK.

~~~
gh02t
It has vi in the base system, specifically `vim-tiny`. Vi is mandated by
POSIX, so pretty much every distro includes some minimal version of it in the
base system. `nvi` is also used sometimes instead.

------
RubenSandwich
Regardless if you feel like if the NeoVim refactor is worth it or not we can
all agree that it is tremendous effort to modernize code written over the
course of decades. Great job guys on another release!

~~~
agumonkey
The versionning repository should be a book about software engineering.

------
shakna
> This release features a macOS pre-built package.

Yay, no more compiling to upgrade!

> Windows is no longer "experimental", it is fully supported. > Windows
> package includes a GUI, curl.exe and other utilities.

Awesome. Well thought-out.

> 1215084 backtick-expansion works with shell=fish #6224

Solves one of my main problems.

~~~
petre
Should be an app/dmg though. The libs shipped with it can interfere with my
setup.

------
lunixbochs
This release fixes one of the biggest bugs with asynchronously embedding
Neovim (some input states would just block the API), and makes ActualVim more
reliable as a result. Neovim embedding works pretty well now, and will only
get better. I'm hoping it will be possible soon to embed the entire Vim
experience into another editor with little to no tradeoffs on either side.
I've been impressed when interacting with the Neovim developers.

~~~
pmoriarty
I'd love to see neovim embedded in Firefox, and have it be just a standard
part of every text field. Having a seperate editor window pop up as with the
It's All Text extension is just not the same.

It'd also be great if there was a way to have neovim "wrap" arbitrary shell
commands, kind of like rlwrap[1] does, only with full vim editing features
available instead of the relatively crippled readline.

[1] -
[http://utopia.knoware.nl/~hlub/uck/rlwrap/](http://utopia.knoware.nl/~hlub/uck/rlwrap/)

~~~
voidz
I wish something like this were available for Chrome. My Firefox use has been
declining. Not really sure why. Though the termination of the addons language
(xul?) in favor of webextensions is probably a big reason.

~~~
hammerandtongs
You might like this -

[https://github.com/akahuku/wasavi](https://github.com/akahuku/wasavi)

I'm hoping it's ported to Firefox when webextensions are ready.

------
musaffa
I use Neovim on daily basis. It works really well. It requires tremendous
efforts and love to transform a huge archaic code base into a much modern one.
Thanks, Neovim team!

~~~
mundanevoice
This can be said for any rewrite. Let's wait and see what happens to Neovim's
code in coming 10-15 years if it can last that long. When you have to support
all the legacy systems and all types of OSes out there, crap is going to come
in the code.

~~~
riffraff
To be fair, supporting all legacy systems and all types of OSes seems to be an
explicit non-goal of neovim.

~~~
mundanevoice
Neovim does have breaking changes from Vim, that by definition make support
for some of these systems very hard or impossible.

------
oblio
My God, it's full of stars :)

> Windows support:

> Windows is no longer "experimental", it is fully supported.

> Windows package includes a GUI, curl.exe and other utilities.

~~~
kuon
Wasn't "dev moving away from macOS" a hot topic on HN lately?

~~~
oblio
It was, but I'm on Windows, so no "moving away from MacOS" for me, anyway :)

------
stewbrew
I understand why they started neovim, but don't think the split between vim 8
of today and neovim is a good thing. Makes me think of emacs vs xemacs but
worth because they use slightly different dialects of vimscript (closures,
currying in vim 8, different api for asynchronous calls). I personally wish
they'd meet on some common, standardized ground. This would require both
parties to accept they are not alone though.

Edit: I realize that "Vim 8 features: partials, lambdas." might solve part of
my problem.

~~~
godmodus
The diffwrence in performance is hhuuuugggee!

Vim lags on my project, nvim doesnt! Quadcorei5, 16hb ram!

~~~
majewsky
What are you doing that makes Vim lag? In my experience (on much weaker
hardware) it only lags noticeably when you do wildly unusual stuff, e.g. huge
files or files with huge lines.

~~~
omaranto
On an old netbook (remember those?) Vim would lag just entering text in insert
mode when I was editing LaTeX files (and​ only LaTeX files as far as I could
tell). Slowness of LaTeX syntax highlighting is a known problem (the help
files have a section called tex-slow). Trying all the suggestions there didn't
speed things up enough for me. I tried editing without syntax highlighting for
a while (this did work and completely solved the lag), but eventually just
switched to Emacs.

------
garou
The efforts of Neovim team are well-intentioned and we are seeing it shaking
the ViM development. (the previous major version from (7.0) 2006, before it
(6.0) 2001).

We love updates after all.

~~~
pekk
I wouldn't read too much into changes of version numbers. vim was being
updated continuously.

~~~
garou
The versions numbers talk about the changes happening and compatibility.
There's just a few new features in the 7.3 [1]:

Persistent undo, More encryption, Conceal text, Lua interface, Python3
interface.

[1]
[http://vimdoc.sourceforge.net/htmldoc/version7.html](http://vimdoc.sourceforge.net/htmldoc/version7.html)

------
adrianN
I'm currently using vim and I'm quite happy with it. I don't use many plugins,
so better support for plugins is not very helpful to me. Are there other
reasons why I should switch to Neovim?

~~~
monzee
Faster startup, mouse works as you'd expect in a regular desktop app. Switch
panes, tabs, open new tab, scroll panes, resize panes, select ranges, all in
the terminal. I know not using the mouse is one of the reasons why one would
choose vim, but the mouse really is faster/more intuitive in some situations.

~~~
lucky_cloud
Using a mouse is not faster if you really know how to use vim. I guarantee I
can get to any line in any window in any tab faster than it takes for my hand
to even reach the mouse. Same for resizing splits, selecting ranges, whatever.
It's only more intuitive if you're stuck in a GUI mental model. Disable mouse
support and learn to navigate vim just like you learned to edit in vim.

Not trying to come off as confrontational, just my 2¢.

~~~
BoorishBears
Being "stuck in a GUI mental model" means I use IDEs for most development I do
instead of vim/emacs (which I guess would be the extreme of being stuck in
that model?). At the end of the day using my mouse to open a file doesn't
impede my ability to code in the slightest.

I've never understood the almost subtle elitism behind being able to use Vim
without a mouse because "moving your hand to the mouse is slow". If a problem
is so simple my writing/editing a solution for it is constrained by... the
time it takes my hand to move to my mouse... I usually just fire up nano.

~~~
lucky_cloud
It's not about elitism, it's about using the tool you've chosen efficiently.

If I used the IDEs you use, and you suggested to me a way of using them more
efficiently, I wouldn't accuse you of elitism. I'd thank you for showing me
something new and improving the way I work.

Have you ever witnessed somebody using a mouse to move between form fields? My
bet is you at least thought about telling them they can use the tab key. You
probably wouldn't expect them to come back with some comment about the subtle
elitism behind using the tab key.

~~~
BoorishBears
If I told them they didn't _really_ know how to use a browser because... they
didn't know to use tab to move between fields... I wouldn't be surprised in
the _slightest_ if they came back with some comment about the subtle elitism

~~~
lucky_cloud
Ha, fair enough. But that really only shows that my example wasn't great.

If you eat soup with a fork, you don't know how to use silverware. If you
drive nails with a ball-peen hammer, you don't know how to use hammers. That's
not hammer or silverware elitism.

IMO, using a mouse in vim shows that you don't know vim. You can still get the
job done, but why not commit to using the tool as intended?

------
voidz
The only thing that bugs me about neovim is that it seems to require
workarounds to get the escape button to behave the same as in vim. When I
press escape to exit insert mode, there is a small delay. If I press a key
(e.g. 'j' to go down) too quickly after Escape, it inserts the 'j' and cancels
what escape is meant to do.

In tmux I know of a workaround (iirc, 'set escape-delay 0' or something
similar), but I wish I didn't have to change a tmux setting so one program can
function. It's really annoying.. but ultimately worth it, I guess.

That said — to the neovim team: congratulations ​on reaching the 2.0
milestone!

~~~
rofrol
Have tried the newest version? I couldn't reproduce this delay.

And btw. it's version 0.2 not 2.0

------
mikaelj
Hope someone (not me!) starts working on a nvimclient (akin to emacsclient)
soon.

~~~
rjzzleep
maybe neovim-remote is what you want? [https://github.com/mhinz/neovim-
remote](https://github.com/mhinz/neovim-remote)

~~~
mikaelj
Close, but not enough. I want to open the same editor session spread across
multiple windows on multiple monitors.

~~~
sevensor
I saw this thread, and I promised myself I wasn't going to plug Kakoune -- I
think NeoVim is a great project and I want it to succeed. They deserve every
bit of the praise they're getting. But I'm going to have to break my promise,
because Kakoune has the exact feature you're after, and I'm using it right
now. That, along with familiar keybindings, selection-oriented modal
interface, tmux integration... I could go on. Kakoune is a modern modal text
editor for your terminal, and it's worth trying!

Caveats: if you depend on plugins to give you an IDE-like experience in Vim,
kak is not for you. Your vim plugins won't work. If you use Windows but don't
want to use Cygwin, kak is not for you.

~~~
Tarean
Kakoune is always super tempting to me but the plugin thing is a deal breaker
for me. Not for IDE-like features but because limiting myself to vanilla vim
motions feels like using a bad vim plugin by now.

At least surround.vim, targets.vim and a couple custom text objects.

------
JdeBP
My first impression was not a good one. Its hardwired assumption of xterm
control sequences, even when TERM says something else entirely, caused it to
be unusable on my terminal (which understands DECSLPP as DECSLPP).

* [https://github.com/neovim/neovim/blob/v0.2.0/src/nvim/tui/tu...](https://github.com/neovim/neovim/blob/v0.2.0/src/nvim/tui/tui.c#L423)

~~~
voidz
So, what terminal do you use?

~~~
JdeBP
I use several. But this particular one is most definitely _not_ xterm, nor
dtterm.

Ironically, it actually implements both of DECSLPP and DECSCPP, but without
the restrictions to only some sizes. So nvim _could_ use these DEC VT control
sequences to set the screen size. Unfortunately, there is no simple mechanism
for nvim to know this. There's no terminal type that a user could set that
would hint at this ability, let alone a termcap/terminfo capability.

Nonetheless, just blithely assuming that every terminal type in existence
implements dtterm's idiosyncratic extensions to the DEC VT control sequence
set is wrong. There _is_ a way for nvim to be told that the terminal is likely
to have dtterm's idiosyncrasies, or indeed xterm's. nvim even uses it to
detect _other_ terminal types with _other_ idiosyncratic control sequence
extensions.

It actually becomes usable once this bug is fixed.

* [https://github.com/jdebp/neovim/commit/3304de142b60efe8728c0...](https://github.com/jdebp/neovim/commit/3304de142b60efe8728c0b10183f820e9195d293)

------
erikb
I'd say the info provided in the github releases is interesting, but it
doesn't provide the necessary oversight a general info text would give. Can't
really say what happened. Even if it was a stabilizing release it would be
nice to see that somewhere.

------
hestefisk
Any reports on how stable the Windows release is?

~~~
seren
I don't know if it'an issue on my side, but I have not manage to do anything
with the :terminal on Windows 7. It starts a prompt but I can not input
anything in Terminal mode. I tried 'i' to go in insert mode in the terminal
but it does not seem to work either. (To be sure this is not something in my
vimrc, I tried with and without it). At that point I am not sure if this is a
problem between chair and keyboard or a bug.

~~~
numeromancer
\- Download and extract neovim win64 package

\- Start nvim-qt.exe

\- Get message box saying "The Neovim process has crashed"

\- Go back to Vim

~~~
uzantonomon
Same experience here.

