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I feel like I have to migrate to a new (Neo)Vim package manager about once every 3 or so years. I think my path has been: pathogen -> Vundle -> vim-plug -> lazy.nvim. Hopefully, this the last VIM package manager?

I'm really looking forward to this. I hope it helps push the nvim plugin community into lazy loading plugins by default instead of relying on a complex plugin manager like lazy. The nvim docs have a little note related to this[1].

I'm quite a fan of the nvim-neorocks plugin best practices as well[2]. In fact it seems like part of them got merged recently[3] hahaha.

[1] https://neovim.io/doc/user/lua-plugin.html#lua-plugin-lazy

[2] https://github.com/nvim-neorocks/nvim-best-practices

[3] https://github.com/neovim/neovim/pull/29073

If it helps any neovimmers I recently migrated away from lazy.nvim to just using vim.pack:

https://github.com/azemetre/dotfiles/pull/61/files

I have had zero issues thus far, also don't use too many plugins (like 50ish). It was way easier than expected, also had help from another person making the plugins load similarly to "lazy" as well. This setup is way way way faster than using lazy.nvim IME, especially my work computer where it would take 300 ms to load. Now it's around 80ms.

Every time I see a something with the ability to import code from Git, especially if they allow specifying a branch (this pack even supports commit hashes), I wish they would document (and that more people would know) that they can "checkout" a branch at a specific time; because a lot of branches (vim plugins included) don't even bother with versioning.

ex: you can use this to checkout a repo @ a specific datetime: > git checkout 'master@{2025-05-26 18:30:00}'

just doing my share to help people steer away from another leftPad disaster (or the xz apocalypse that almost was...)

I'm a long time vim user, but neovim with plugins is just not worth it for me. Something always breaks. I think neovim would do better if they started integrating the core plugins like LSP, tree sitter

Still primitive. But I'd love to drop lazy for this once they implement a differed load.

I love lazy.nvim. It's great no doubt. But recently I felt like the author is taking an aggressive user retention behavior by re-imprementing every useful open-source community plugins out there (like snack.nvim, mini.nvim). That's a kill-zone/copycat strategy. I don't get it.

I'm torn. I really like Lazy and have never minded having different package managers for Vim over the years. But having one blessed one is probably better long term, just like built-in LSP and Treesitter.

You don’t really need a Vim plugin manager, especially if you use git for your dotfiles.

Installing a plugin merely requires placing its files (eg: cloning its repository) into a well-known location. You can just do that.

If you track your config with git, you can track plugins with submodules. This has the added advantage of pinning the exact version (and tracking that version in for).

I don't need this to be minimal, I'd love it to be the one true solution, niche requirements excepted.

I'm currently still using vim pack with git submodules because I can't be bothered to trawl through tens of GitHub projects to work out what's the best supported / most liked / currently recommended third-party nvim package manager.

I build neovim from source by myself, and maintain plugins as git submodules in pack/plugins/start (nvim automatically loads these at startup) and pack/plugins/opt (these are loaded manually) by myself. I have stuff like emmet, diffview.nvim, nvim-dap, etc loaded optionally when I want to use them. Status bar, LSP, Treesitter, and a few small tpope plugins are loaded on startup. I have a 500 line init.vim. I have a few local patches for some of the plugins.

This way, _nothing_ changes ever. That's how I want it.

I used to use astro.nvim (a few years back), then at one point I upgraded it and they had changed all the keybinds (even for basic shit like go to references IIRC), it was absolutely insane. I lost my shit and deleted the whole thing and moved to this setup. I will never use an nvim distro or update nvim plugins ever again. If I really want something I will git pull it myself (I'm looking out for nvim 12's ghost text feature for example). But in the general case, I'm done with any changes whatsoever. Not one byte.

I actually open-sourced my "approach" and documented it but I left it midway, if others are interested I might stop procrastinating and actually finish it.

I’ve been using it for awhile, no issues: https://erock-git-dotfiles.pgs.sh/tree/main/item/dot_config/...

Built a single file config with this after watching Sylvan Franklin and TJ DeVries a bit on YouTube and it has been great. Config junkies may need something more, but for a minimalist (and is minimalism not the essence of neovim?) it’s lovely.

Neat, but it's missing ability to lazy load plugins. I'm using lazy.nvim which is both lazy loader and update manager and it's really great.

Offtopic, and no one asked, but I'm going to advertise anyway: Helix is a good alternative to (neo)vim for anyone who wants a terminal editor with vimotions(ish) but doesn't like configuring or scripting. That was the selling point that made me stay with it: The out-of-the-box experience was close enough to what I was hoping to end at but gave up with neovim due to the hassle required. It is opinionated of course, but the default behavior and appearance of Helix felt much more appropriate than that of neovim.

From the name I initially assumed that it's about adding 'packs' (maintained group of plugins) similar to AstroNVim community packs [1]

[1] https://github.com/AstroNvim/astrocommunity/tree/main/lua/as...

It’s funny when you start a project and then find something so similar in the wild.

I’m writing a C package manager in exactly the same vein. Git based, no binaries, rolling release. It’s probably not such a coincidence, since I was inspired by Lazy in the first place.

https://github.com/tspader/spn

M-x package-list-packages :)

I recently migrated to it [1], no issues so far. It doesn’t have the many features Lazy.nvim has (e.g. lazy loading of plugins that can be triggered in various ways), but this is a tradeoff I am fine with.

[1] https://github.com/bpierre/dotfiles/blob/main/nvim/lua/packa...

This is the original issue that added this: https://github.com/neovim/neovim/issues/20893

Apparently this has been a long-time goal of the Neovim project, but it isn't really explained why. It feels like bloat in a space where existing plugins did a fantastic job, but apparently some people disagreed with that.

Neovim is really excellent, it's so good that they are adding a package manager. Loving this.

Given how many configs being shared here which include their own half-baked (no offence!) `add_plugin` functions which replicate traditional vim plugin managers, there's definitely still room for something like Lazy which just wraps `vim.pack`

Nice.

Should it provide to backup/install local plugins? I mean, probably I can move the directory with it into the correct destination.

Seems like every 3 months something new supersedes the incumbent. I’ve been using kickstart.nvim and maintaining parity with all the changes has been chaotic.

Over the last decade i went thru 4 package managers. I always hoped for a builtin one. Over the years my package dep count has decresed radically. I think i use 4-6 plugins (and one theme) really on a daily basis. The rest is nice to haves i probably use once a month making them up for deletion.

I've been very happy with Paq [1] which is essentially a lightweight wrapper around git pull.

[1] https://github.com/savq/paq-nvim

More news on neovim than vim these days, including this one. I wonder if I should switch to neovim, as more AI related plugins are neovim only. In the meantime, Vim has served me fine so far.

Can't say I'm looking forward to migrating from lazy.nvim, tbh... Can anyone tell me what this does better than lazy? I can't really tell from the docs alone

One step closer to having all the features of Emacs. :flex:

I love Vim key bindings, and I'm happy to see the flagship of Vim keybindings improve.

Does anyone know what’s the ground they want to make a builtin plugin manager? Did they think there should be some sort of standard?

I’ve migrated over to it - got about 12 plugins or so. No complaints so far! I don’t have strong opinions on whether my plugins are loaded lazily or not. Seems to work fine to get it done and get out of the way.

Plan to switch from vim-plug to this one, hopefully wont have to change again

I’m disappointed that it requires the plugins to have a specific scheme for naming branches, so it won’t be compatible with all plugins.