LunarVimConfig

This repo contains my configuration for LunarVim. The focus was to create an IDE for Julia, although it can be adapted to any other language by installing the appropriate plugins.

This blog post is reposted here and presents a quick overview on how to use LunarVim and set it up for Julia.

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Vim for Julia - Another Look

UPDATES

UPDATED - 14 September 2022 VERSION: LunarVim Stable 1.1.4

The config.lua file has been updated. The Julia LSP is now natively supported. So part of the previous tutorial has been removed, since it's not necessary anymore.

LunarVim now comes with the ToggleTerm plugin, and this enables a very smooth integration between vim and the terminal. In my configuration file, I've modified the default behavior to open a terminal in a vertical split, and added some shortcuts, for example, <ctrl> + b sends the line current line in the vim file to the terminal opened via <ctrl> + t. Hence, one can easily write code and send commands to the REPL. The same works for sending several lines. Just select them using visual mode, and press <ctrl> + b.

LunarVim as a Julia IDE

In the past, I wrote on how to use Vim for Julia. Recently, I've changed my setup and I've been using the new and amazing LunarVim. Here is a brief tutorial on how to setup Vim (actually Neovim) as your Julia IDE.

Introducing LunarVim

The first question to be answered is, what is LunarVim? Presto!

LunarVim is an opinionated, extensible, and fast IDE layer for Neovim >= 0.5.0. LunarVim takes advantage of the latest Neovim features such as Treesitter and Language Server Protocol support.

In simpler words, it's a series of default configurations for Neovim that makes it even more amazing. The first requirement to use LunarVim is to install Neovim with version at least 0.5. Unfortunately, the sudo apt install neovim will not work (at the time I'm writing this), because the version installed will be lower than the required one.

An easy way to install a proper version is to add the PPA for the unstable version and install it. Here are the easy steps:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:neovim-ppa/unstable
sudo apt update
sudo apt install neovim

To install LunarVim, just run:

bash <(curl -s https://raw.githubusercontent.com/lunarvim/lunarvim/master/utils/installer/install.sh)

By running the command lvim in your terminal, LunarVim should start! You can always add alias vim = "lvim" to your .bashrc , to run LunarVim instead of vim.

Setting up Julia

Julia is now supported natively, so there is no special installation. The only thing you need to do is to install the julia-vim plugin. To install, go to your config.lua file and add the julia-vim plugin into the lvim.plugins command. If you've just installed a fresh LunarVim, the config.lua will have a sample of lvim.plugins commented out. Just use it and place the { "JuliaEditorSupport/julia-vim" } inside. It will look something like this:

-- Additional Plugins
lvim.plugins = {
    ...
    { "JuliaEditorSupport/julia-vim" },
    ...
}

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Fast Course on LunarVim + Julia

You can now read the documentation on LunarVim to better understand some of the default settings. But, I'll give some tips on how LunarVim works, and how to use it with Julia to run your code. Here is a (very) fast course on some of the main commands for LunarVim:

• In LunarVim, your is the space , hence, many short cuts will be composed of pressing "space" followed by something else. Here is where LunarVim comes shining. If you just press "space" and wait a bit. A menu will pop-up from below, showing possible commands.

• LunarVim comes with "NerdCommenter" plugin, which allows you to navigate with a menu. Just press <space>+e;
• In the "NerdCommenter" in normal mode, press <shift>+r to reload the navigation menu, hence, any new created file will now show;
• Press d to delete the file under the cursor, y to copy it, and a to create ("append") a new file.

• Once you open another file, a buffer is created and shown in the top of the screen . You can click on the tab to change buffers, or you can press shift+h or shift+l to change buffers.

• Press ctrl+w to see the commands related to splitting screen and moving between screens. You can press ctrl+ h,l,j,k to move between windows.

• As in regular Vim, you can press / to start searching and then space+h clears the highlighted terms in the search.

• When you open a Julia file, you just need to wait a bit for the LSP to start working. Once the LSP is loaded, auto-completion will be working, and many other helpful features, such as visualizing the docstring of a function. For that, press g and a window will pop-up with many shortcuts related to the LSP. For example, you can press g + p to take a peek at the docstring and g + d to actually open the function definition in another buffer. Look the figures below.

• Lastly, you can press ctrl+t to open and minimize a floating terminal. Once this is done, you can run the Julia REPL and copy/paste every line of code you want to run.

• Press <space>+f+t to search for a text in any files in the file tree;

• Press <space>+l+p+d to open the docstring for a function;

• Press shift + k to also open the documentation (very useful).

There are many other helpful commands. Check-out the documentation on LunarVim or try them out by yourself to learn more. Hope this was helpful.

More on Julia

LSP Instatiation

There are some extra information necessary to properly setup Julia with Neovim. Besides the command to install the LanguageServer, as shown below:

julia --project=~/.julia/environments/nvim-lspconfig -e 'using Pkg; Pkg.add("LanguageServer")'

It's important to point out that the LSP will load the information on packages based on the project you are in. For example, if you create a directory MyCode/, with a Project.toml and a Manifest.toml file, then the LSP will load only the autocompletion and documentation for packages installed in this environment.

If no environment project is found, the LSP will probably load based on you global configuration, which will probably be on ~/.julia/environments/v1.6/ (if you are using v1.6). You can check from where your LSP is loading by looking the file ~/.cache/nvim/lsp.log, which will show what's running.

Speed-up the LSP loading time

You might note that takes some annoying seconds for the LSP to start with Julia. This can be improved with a compiled image via PackageCompiler. This method is due to (Fredrik Ekre)[https://github.com/fredrikekre].

First, we must add the following lines inside our ~/.config/lvim/config.lua:

require'lspconfig'.julials.setup{
    on_new_config = function(new_config, _)
        local julia = vim.fn.expand("~/.julia/environments/nvim-lspconfig/bin/julia")
        if require'lspconfig'.util.path.is_file(julia) then
            new_config.cmd[1] = julia
        end
    end
}

This is telling our LSP to run from ~/.julia/environments/nvim-lspconfig/bin/julia. At the moment, there is nothing in this location. But the next steps will create an image and the Julia executable to run this image.

Inside the folder ~/.julia/environments/nvim-lspconfig/, create the file Makefile as the one inside this Github repository (the file is inside the speed-lsp folder). Then, move inside the ~/.julia/environments/nvim-lspconfig/ folder and run make command. At some point some Julia example code will open inside your terminal. Just save and close the file. After that, just wait for the image to be created. You are done! Now your LSP should be loading almost immediately. Although, it might take some time for the autocompletion on packages to work. The time of loading will depend on how many packages you have installed in your environment.

EXTRA

Using Latex on LunarVim

Besides Julia, you might want to write Latex with LunarVim. To do so, install the vimtex plugin (it's already in the configurations).

Some extra notes on the configuration. Lsp comes with several pre-set configurations, which might be quite annoying. For example, when altering latex files, there will be snippets to things like . or ,, which autocompletes every time you press Enter. Thus, this configuration line lvim.builtin.cmp.confirm_opts.select = false alters this behaviour to leave Enter as "skip line" as default.

When enabling autopairs, another annoying configuration is the completion for '$' which doesn't allow you to properly delete the dollar sign. You can go to ~/.local/share/lunarvim/lvim/lua/core/autopairs.lua, and comment the line :with_del(cond.not_after_regex_check "xx") -- disable add newline when press <cr>. Note that autopairs also causes problems with the previous configuration line that fixes the autocompletion on Latex. You might wish to not use autopairs all together, or (as I did), comment the lines related to Latex and the Enter autocompletion on autopairs. My modified autopairs.lua can be found in this GitHub repo.

One might be interested in using different compilation engines for Latex. For example, you might want to use lualatex. For this, write %! TeX program = lualatex in the top of the main Latex file. Then, vimtex will use lualatex.

Useful shortcuts

It's not always clear every shortcut you might need. Here is a list of some unusual yet useful shortcuts:

Coding

• Shift + k - Opens the documentation for a function;

Floating terminal

• Ctrl+\+n - When inside the floating terminal, if you press this you will go to Normal mode;

Latex

• \+l - When in a Latex file, the \ is what vimtex calls <localleader>. The \+l is the default shortcut to many of vimtexcommands;
• \+l+e - This runs the :VimtexErros which toggles the bottom menu that pops-up when compiling the Latex script;

Explorer - NerdTree

• shift+r inside the explorer - Updates the explorer to show changes that happened, such as new files and folders;
• a inside the explorer - Creates new file;
• d inside the explorer - Deletes file;
• r inside the explorer - Renames file.

Spell checks

By default, the spell check is probably disabled. You can start it by running the command :set spell. In the configuration file, I created a shortcut using <F2>, so pressing F2 will either enable or disable the spelling check. Besides English, you might be interested in having spelling using other languages. In my case, I added support for Portuguese.

(Working method) Besides the shortcuts, you'll need to download the .spl file for your native language. For example, if you want to install the portuguese spell checker, then just enter into LunarVim and use the command :set spelllang=pt. Once you do this, LunarVim will check whether you have the .spl file, and in case you don't have it, it will ask whether you want to download it. Just accept it and wait for the download. The file will be saved at ~/.local/share/nvim/runtime/spell/. You might get a message saying that the download failed, but check the folder, cause it might actually have worked. Once this is done, you are ready. In the configurations I added the shortcut <F3> for Portuguese and <F4> for English. Hence, you can quickly change between both, while <F2> toggles the spell checker. If for some reason you still get that the files are missing, then try creating a spell folder at /home/davibarreira/.local/share/lunarvim/site and place the .spl files there.

(Old) I've downloaded the file pt.utf-8.spl from http://ftp.vim.org/pub/vim/runtime/spell/pt.utf-8.spl and placed the file inside ~/.local/share/nvim/site/spell. Using the command :set spelllang=pt, you change the language to Portuguese. Again, in the configurations I added the shortcut <F3> for Portuguese and <F4> for English. Hence, you can quickly change between both.