Visual Studio Code + Neovim

ɸ minute read.

I’ve started using Vim in 2014. I’ve read a few books, wrote a few articles and gave a few talks on Vim. I really like editing text with Vim, but I was never happy with it’s file management, extensions, things like that.

I’ve noticed that Visual Studio Code (VSCode) is used by slightly more than 50% of developers that participated in 2019 Stack Overflow survey. (I didn’t find editors section in 2020 survey.)

I’ve learned about Neovim in Modern Vim book. (I never wrote the book review.) I’ve started using Neovim in 2018 after I’ve started reading the book.

I’ve noticed more and more people using VSCode so I gave it a try earlier this year. The only record I have is a commit in my dotfiles from a few days ago, but I know I’ve been using it for a few months. I liked VSCode in general. It has all the features I need and a lot of extensions. But, after using Vim, editing text using anything else feels like walking backwards. (Editing text using Vim feels like running. Forwards.)

vscode-neovim VSCode extension was all I needed to connect the two. A real Vim implementation (not an emulator!) inside VSCode.

You need three things. VSCode, Neovim and vscode-neovim.

Installing VSCode is simple, download the installer from the site.

Installing Neovim should also be simple. I’ve installed it on a Mac using Homebrew and all I needed to do was:

brew install --HEAD neovim

--HEAD part is important. It will install version 0.5. If you don’t use --HEAD you will get version 0.4. vscode-neovim needs version 0.5.

vscode-neovim is installed from VSCode Extensions. Search for Neo Vim by Alexey Svetliakov.

Links

• Visual Studio Code at visualstudio.com
• Neovim at neovim.io
• vscode-neovim at github.com