Leveraging telescope/fzf for plugin search

Plugins
1

It would be cool if telescope/fz could search for neovim plugins on github to get a similar search-and-install experience when you’re in other editors. (have a bot repo that crawls github for (neo)vim plugins and stores the relevant info like repo name and keywords, have the fuzzy finders search that metadata, render the readme in the preview?)

I’m not sure the utility for this though. I think most of the value of these kind of search-and-install systems is to get you up and running quickly when you’re new to the editor. if you choose to start learning/try out neovim/vim, the goal of “up and running quick” is over before you can say vim.

having said that there is still value in the discoverability aspect of searching for something like “search and replace” and finding all the search and replace plugins out there.

1 Like
2

There’s ongoing effort on defining a plugin spec, which would probably go with a manifest/registry instance where many plugins will be listed.

Let’s hope this work comes through and I’d imagine a telescope extension would pop up naturally doing what you suggest, which I agrees is very nice!

There’s also a list with cool plugins. GitHub - rockerBOO/awesome-neovim: Collections of awesome neovim plugins.

4

neovim has made possible some powerful plugins but one goal I cherish is to improve on defaults and Imake (neo)vim more approachable. Searching plugins is the “easy” part, installing/configuring them is right now the tricky part. When you install plugins today, you usually have to specify their dependency by hand (in packer.nvim or vim-plug etc) and call a huge “setup” function.
1/ I am now experimenting with luarocks so that users dont have to specify manually the dependencies Modules labeled 'neovim' - LuaRocks (+ a nix nixos.org/ to reference external non-lua binaries)
2/ my conviction is we need to be able to generate configurations (extra points if from a GUI) to make neovim more approachable. It doesn’t take anything away from advanced users but would make starting with neovim much easier. I would love to be able to click on some buttons from times to times to interact with my config :slight_smile: This is what I envision Formalize an extension specification: make configuring neovim as easy as vscode · Issue #14375 · neovim/neovim · GitHub for.

EDIT: the closest thing we have right now is the maybe discrete :options. With neovim improvements, we could generate most of this already. Build some of it on top of that with autoinstall of some plugins would be so damn cool ("[ ] Enable snippets" / " [ ] enable git signs"). Shameless link to a one hour attempt a few years back GitHub - teto/vim-config: GUI to help configure (neo)vim

2 Likes