Setup Vim (Astro Vim) on a Macbook
Setup a neovim instance on a Macbook M1/M2 ready for a development workflow.
Published on Jul 31 2022 at 11:53am
Overview
Use the following steps to have a decent vim installation relatively quickly on a Macbook with a M1 / M2 chipset
Brew installation
Brew is a package manager for MacOS which makes it very easy to install packages. I highly recommend this package manager on MacOS. Its worth the effort to get it installed you will thank yourself later on.
From www.brew.sh -
/bin/bash -c "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/install/HEAD/install.sh)"
Sample command using brew -
brew install wget
Install NeoVim
Neovim is our base vim install. Install Neovim using the command -
brew install neovim
Install Astro Vim
AstroNvim is an aesthetic and feature-rich neovim config that is extensible and easy to use with a great set of plugins. Install AstroNvim by using the commands
git clone https://github.com/AstroNvim/AstroNvim ~/.config/nvim
nvim +PackerSync
Setup Astro Vim
Make a backup of your existing nvim configuration -
mv ~/.config/nvim ~/.config/nvimbackup
Install LSP
Enter :LspInstall followed by the name of the server you want to install
Example: :LspInstall pyright
Install language parser
Enter :TSInstall followed by the name of the language you want to install
Example: :TSInstall python
Manage plugins
Run :PackerClean to remove any disabled or unused plugins
Run :PackerSync to update and clean plugins
Update AstroNvim
Run :AstroUpdate to get the latest updates from the repository
Install NerdFonts
Follow this step to install your desired fonts and so font glyphs are rendered correctly
Firacode is my current favourite ♥️
Fonts can be downloaded from https://www.nerdfonts.com/font-downloads
Optional requirements
These are other optional packages which can be installed -
ripgrep - live grep telescope search (leader + fw)
lazygit - git ui toggle terminal (leader + tl or leader + gg)
NCDU - disk usage toggle terminal (leader + tu)
Htop - process viewer toggle terminal (leader + tt)
Python - python repl toggle terminal (leader + tp)
Node - node repl toggle terminal (leader + tn)