A couple of weeks ago I decided to redo my Neovim configuration and lean into Lua. The goal was to optimize startup performance and improve usability.

Follow along with my neovim dotfiles repo

For years, I used Plug to manage my vim plugins, but after seeing TJ DeVries experiment with lazy.nvim, I decided to go all in!

By far, the biggest challenge was learning Lua 5.1. All the scripting languages I’ve used in the past (Ruby, Perl, Python) emphasize a “batteries included” approach. Lua, in contrast, felt like I had to assemble everything from tiny parts.

Once I got past the Lua hurdle, the rest of the conversion was straightforward. Most of the time I could swap out Vimscript with neovim Lua API methods via a regexp.

I’m pleased with the results. Startup time is faster, there are fewer weird bugs, and I understand all the configurations.

vim-rails is enabled only if config/environment.rb is present in the Rails working directory.

At work, we have an engine based working directory that does not contain this file (as there’s an embedded application within the engine.)

To enable vim-rails, I need to do:

echo "load ::File.expand_path('../../embedded-app/config/environment.rb',__FILE__)" >> config/environment.rb
mkdir -p .git/info
echo "config/environment.rb" >> .git/info/exclude

Within the repo to enable vim-rails support.