Neovim configuration

Official installation instructions

⚠️ Lazy is updating each package automatically, but there might be breaking changes that make this config throw errors. This is typical, as the plugins are developed quite fast. Use :checkhealth to diagnose if the config isn't working properly. ⚠️

Sadly, at the moment the nvim is not maintained very attentively in apt and hence a PPA should be used if one does not want to install manually. Unfortunately, the stable PPA is also practically buried, so the unstable PPA must be used.

First, check that you can use add-apt-repository by installing the required package:

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install software-properties-common

Then, the PPA can be added and Neovim installed from it with the required Python modules.

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:neovim-ppa/unstable
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install neovim
sudo apt-get install python-dev python-pip python3-dev python3-pip

To set nvim as the default editor, run

sudo update-alternatives --install /usr/bin/editor editor /usr/bin/nvim 60
sudo update-alternatives --config editor

Some of the packages require Node and nvim-treesitter requires an extra package for TeX formatting. Install these with

curl -fsSL https://deb.nodesource.com/setup_18.x | sudo -E bash -
sudo apt-get install -y nodejs
sudo npm install -g tree-sitter-cli

Zathura is my go-to document viewer, see my zathura-rc. Zathura combined with VimTeX requires xdotool for forward search

sudo apt-get install xdotool

For clipboard integration, install also xclip

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install xclip

Finally, configure the software by cloning the repo to local configuration directory via

cd ~/.config
git clone git@github.com:vohonen/nvim-config.git nvim

Lazy should install all packages automatically. The command :checkhealth is useful if some difficult errors arise.

Install prefered language servers, linting etc. with :Mason.

If nvim-treesitter breaks with some filetypes instead of others, try :TSUpdate <filetype>.

External tools (linters, formatters, LSP servers)

The linting (lua/plugins/lint.lua) and formatting (lua/plugins/conform.lua) configs shell out to external CLIs. These are not bundled with the plugins and must be installed separately. The config is resilient: a linter whose executable is missing is simply skipped (it will not throw errors on buffer enter / tab switch), and conform silently skips missing formatters. So install only what you need.

Run :checkhealth conform and :checkhealth lint to see what is detected.

Linters & formatters

Filetype	Linter (nvim-lint)	Formatter (conform)	CLI(s)
markdown	markdownlint	prettier	markdownlint, prettier
python	ruff	ruff_format, ruff_organize_imports	ruff
lua	luacheck	stylua	luacheck, stylua
tex	chktex	latexindent	chktex, latexindent (see LaTeX below)

Install on macOS (Homebrew + npm — npm's global prefix is Homebrew's, so binaries land on PATH automatically):

# markdown
npm install -g markdownlint-cli prettier
# python / lua
brew install ruff stylua luacheck

On Linux the equivalents are npm install -g markdownlint-cli prettier, pipx install ruff (or cargo install ruff), cargo install stylua, and luarocks install luacheck.

LSP servers (via Mason)

Servers are listed in ensure_installed in lua/plugins/ls.lua and are auto-installed by mason-lspconfig on startup (or manually via :Mason):

• lua_ls — Lua (this Neovim config)
• pyright — Python
• marksman — Markdown
• texlab — LaTeX
• html — HTML

LaTeX toolchain

chktex, latexindent, latexmk, bibtex, and biber ship with a TeX distribution. On macOS, BasicTeX is the lightweight option (the installer needs an admin password, so run it yourself):

brew install --cask basictex
# then, in a new shell, pull the pieces the config uses:
sudo tlmgr update --self
sudo tlmgr install latexindent latexmk chktex biber

On Linux: sudo apt-get install texlive-extra-utils chktex latexmk biber.