Containerizing vim with plugins

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I am trying to containerize vim along with the plugins. I am using singularity containers. The most important plugin is youcompleteme. My approach to containerizing the plugins is to install vim and clone all the plugins to /etc/vim/plugin and compile youcompleteme during the build. Once the image is built, I launch vim with the modified runtimepath (rtp) that points to /etc/vim:

singularity run vim_image.sif vim --cmd 'set rtp^=/etc/vim'

But, vim is failing to load the plugins. I am getting errors like:

Error detected while processing /etc/vim/plugin/sonokai/autoload/airline/themes/sonokai.vim: line
10: E117: Unknown function: sonokai#get_configuration line 11: E121: Undefined variable: s:configuration E116: Invalid arguments for function sonokai#get_palette(s:configuration.style, s:configuration.colors_override)

...

I expect vim to load any plugins inside /etc/vim/plugin without any issues. I am stuck on this. Any suggestions are welcome.

singularity-container docker vim
3 Answers

install vim and clone all the plugins to /etc/vim/plugin

This wouldn't work, even on a physical machine.

Vim's runtime files are laid out in a specific way that is expected to be consistent at all levels so putting your files in random arbitrary locations won't do you any good because nothing will be where it is expected to be.

In this specific case, plugin/sonokai/autoload/airline/themes/sonokai.vim is an autoloaded script but, because you naïvely put it under plugin/, it is sourced as a global plugin, which can only create trouble.

Vim allows you to create directory hierarchies under plugin/ for organisational purpose but those subdirectories are for global plugins only. Filetype plugins, syntax scripts, indent scripts, autoloaded scripts, etc. have nothing to do there so they must be moved under the appropriate directory: ftplugin/, syntax/, etc.

That mechanism leads to a situation where, for a given third-party plugin foo you would get files scattered around:

plugin/foo/foo.vim
syntax/foo/foo.vim
       bar/bar.vim
indent/foo/foo.vim
       bar/bar.vim
etc.

It works, technically, and it might even be usable if you don't have too many plugins, but it is inherently messy.

Nowadays, the preferred way to handle plugins is via the newish :help package feature. Without spoiling the doc too much, there is a new directory in Vim's runtime called pack under which you can put whole third-party plugins, each in their own directory, which is basically what you are trying and failing to do in plugin/. So, instead of the layout above, you would have:

" one directory for plugin `foo`
pack/<whatever>/start/foo/plugin/foo.vim
                          indent/foo.vim
                          syntax/foo.vim
" and one directory for plugin `bar`
pack/<whatever>/start/bar/indent/bar.vim
                          syntax/bar.vim

In a normal setup for a normal user, that pack directory should be created under $HOME/.vim/. In this specific case, the right place is almost certainly $VIM/vimfiles/. The exact value of $VIM depends on many things so you will have to ask Vim where it is with:

:echo $VIM

and adjust your installation script accordingly.

I am not sure about the benefits of containerizing Vim, though.

user_5468610

try this command:

sudo docker run -it amine2029/vim-plug

I build it using this Dockerfile:

FROM ubuntu:18.04
RUN apt-get update -yq \
    && apt-get install curl -yq \
    && apt-get install -yq vim git 
RUN curl -fLo ~/.vim/autoload/plug.vim --create-dirs \
    https://raw.githubusercontent.com/junegunn/vim-plug/master/plug.vim 

ADD vimrc /root/.vimrc

RUN vim -E -s -u "$HOME/.vimrc" +PlugInstall +qall

This 'vimrc' file need to be in the building directory (add more plugins here):

call plug#begin()
 Plug 'tomlion/vim-solidity'
call plug#end()

then to build:

sudo docker build -t vim-plug .
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