vim-awesome / vim-awesome

Awesome Vim plugins from across the universe

Vim Awesome

Vim Awesome wants to be a comprehensive, accurate, and up-to-date directory of Vim plugins.

Many recent Vim plugins are announced on Hacker News or specialized boards, and have since become widely used. But how does a new user find out about these? We wanted to solve that problem and others with Vim Awesome — an open-sourced community resource for discovering new and popular Vim plugins.

Technical report on the details

Where does the data come from?

GitHub, Vim.org, and user submissions.

On GitHub there are more than 30 000 repos that are development environment configurations, commonly called dotfiles. From these repos we can extract references to Vim plugins (as Git URIs), particularly when plugin managers are used.

Although there are orders of magnitude more Vim users than public dotfiles repos on GitHub, it is still a useful source of relative usage data.

Getting set up

1. Install RethinkDB version 2.3.0 from http://rethinkdb.com/docs/install/. (You may have to dig into the download archives.)

2. Install Sass and Compass, which we use to generate our CSS.

   $ gem update --system
   $ gem install bundler
   $ bundle install

3. Install Python dependencies.

   $ pip install -r requirements.txt

4. Install Node dependencies.

   $ npm install -g webpack
   $ npm install

5. Start a local server serving port 5001 by invoking, in the project root directory,

   $ make

6. Initialize the database, tables, and indices:

   $ make init_db

7. Seed the database with some test data. Download this database dump, and then run

   $ rethinkdb restore -i vim_awesome /path/to/vim_awesome_rethinkdb_dump.tar.gz

8. Open the website in your browser!

   $ open http://localhost:5001

Contributing

Take a look at some of these issues to get started.

Chat with us on Gitter!

Acknowledgements

Thanks Ethan Schoonover for use of the Solarized colour scheme.

Much inspiration for this website, both conception and design, came from unheap.com, a resource for browsing jQuery plugins.

Built with React, a JavaScript library for building UIs, and RethinkDB, a document-oriented database.

vim-awesome's Issues

Add vim-plug to install instructions box

Add support for https://github.com/junegunn/vim-plug to

Thanks to @Shougo for bringing this up in #23.

Detect and warn if Vimium (the Chrome plugin) is active

https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/vimium/dbepggeogbaibhgnhhndojpepiihcmeb?hl=en

Scrape vim-plug managed plugins

This configuration file contains plugins managed by https://github.com/junegunn/vim-plug. Scrape them like we do Vundle-, Pathogen-, and NeoBundle-managed plugins

GitHub case sensitivity

Partially related to #22

The case of GitHub usernames matters. Cloning something at keithbsmiley is not the same as cloning at Keithbsmiley. This case sensitivity should be carried over to the install commands. I noticed that it wasn't always. Example

Make it responsive on small screens!

project status

vimawesome.com is a great effort, but it seems dormant, based on the twitter account and lack of github activity. It also seems like the scraper is not run regularly.

What are the plans for the project?

Duplicate plugins

I noticed that there were duplicates of one of my plugins and since there wasn't a fork I assumed it is an issue:

http://vimawesome.com/plugin/specta-vim
http://vimawesome.com/plugin/specta-vim-treacherous

Besides the URL they seem to be similar. Although one shows a GitHub user and the other doesn't but has the vim.org link.

RSS feed

A feed of the newest plugins would be cool!

On plugin details page, show incompatible plugins

Thanks https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7951968 for the suggestion.

Add Tags placeholder gets cut off

Minor UI issue

Don't show vim.org install instructions if GitHub README present

The README will often contain any special install instructions if there are any.

Add UI to sort by newest

Also sort by last updated?

Current sorting is by popularity (by # of users).

UI should clearly show sorting metric.

Add plugin name to page titles

When you have a bunch of tabs open, it can get a bit confusing since the title is always Vim Awesome, it would be great to add the name of the plugin for indivitual pages, e.g. fugitive.vim - Vim Awesome

Add manual install link

Link to latest vim.org download as another tab here:

Re-assign plugin slugs

Currently we have slugs that look like this:

1. fugitive-vim
2. vim-markdown-safe-and-sound

Suppose these slugs will be used in a context where the user might want to input them manually, such as for a plugin manager. Then it would burden the user to enter extraneous symbols like the trailing -vim in 1, especially since the user should not care or know about whether it's vim-fugitive or fugitive-vim or fugitive.vim. The leading/trailing "vim" symbol is often used by plugin authors to differentiate their Vim plugin projects from others, and we have unfortunately inherited that in our slugging scheme. It would be good to just remove all leading and trailing "vim" along with adjacent punctuation.

In the second case, Tim Pope's markdown plugin had a suffix appended to it to distinguish from the identically named vim-markdown project by Mike Down. However, because we happened to have scraped the latter first, it was assigned the clean non-suffixed slug while Tim Pope's more widely-used markdown plugin gets suffixed.

One possible solution to give more canonical and "authoritative" plugins the cleaner slug is to re-assign all the slugs and give the un-suffixed ones to the more widely used by plugin manager users. This is not perfect but would likely be more helpful for the user, so that typing in the un-suffixed slug would go to the one that s/he would most likely expect.

We could also consider allowing plugin authors to manually request slugs, possibly in addition to the above.

Thanks to @tpope for bringing up this issue on IRC.

Github Link Ignored

Hi, I submitted a plugin the other day, and included the github URL as well as the vim.org URL. However it seems as though it has ignored the github URL completely.

I know my internet was buggy that day, hence why you may see a couple of duplicates in the system for it; would have have something to do with the GitHub URL not being present? Or is it more of a design philosophy that if there is a vim.org URL, that there is no need for a GitHub URL?

Therefore the information about the plugin is only given by that page.

Personally if I had a choice between the two, I would only have the GitHub one.

The Plugin in question is 'vim-root' http://vimawesome.com/plugin/vim-root
And a GitHub URL: https://github.com/parnmatt/vim-root

Add plugin homepage link to details page

Some plugins have their own homepage, e.g. https://github.com/hsitz/VimOrganizer

It would be good to link to that somewhere here:

Tag counts seem to be wrong

http://vimawesome.com/?q=tag:plugin shows three results:

This contradicts the sidebar, which says the tag 'plugin' is used 5 times:

Format reStructuredText (.rst) README files too

e.g.

http://vimawesome.com/plugin/vim-python-pep8-indent
https://github.com/hynek/vim-python-pep8-indent

Linkify "vimscript #1234" references in vim.org long descriptions

e.g. http://vimawesome.com/plugin/yamlvim references other vim.org plugins by their vim.org IDs. You can see them linkified in the original description on vim.org: http://www.vim.org/scripts/script.php?script_id=3190

Tags should have an active state if clicked

If I click "ruby" here, the tag should have an active state:

FR: Sorting?

Hi

This is great, thanksfor the awesome work. Is it possible to have basic sorts like based on date, update, name, popularity etc?

thanks

Split up the monolithic SCSS file and use @imports

Rewrite relative URLs in GitHub READMEs to be absolute

Otherwise, we get broken links, e.g. http://vimawesome.com/plugin/vim-multiple-cursors

Add JavaScript tests

Dotfiles scraping: Scrape VAM-managed plugins too

Fix sidebar on short screens

From an email:

The sidebar, which has position:fixed, does not allow me to access the
items in its navigation: when any of the navigation items in the left
sidebar expand, items in it become inaccessible to me because it goes
past my field of view. Solution: don't make it position:fixed. Maybe
just have the "VimAwesome" logo be position:fixed.

ImportError: No module named flask

Hi there,
I got an error in set up part (step 5 $ make)

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "web/server.py", line 6, in <module>
    import flask
ImportError: No module named flask
Terminated: 15

my machine is running on OSX10.9.

Dotfiles scraping: Look for "Plugin" references for Vundle-managed dotfiles

Since Vundle 0.10.2, references to plugins use the keyword Plugin instead of the old Bundle. But, we still only look for references to Bundle.

An example of a .vimrc file using newer Vundle's Plugin keyword:

https://github.com/BlakeWilliams/dotfiles/blob/6a2101fa4f5420d6ccca36d18702f3da1b9eef88/.vimrc

Increase contrast and make more accessible for color-blind users

Reports of not enough contrast on the site:

1. http://www.reddit.com/r/vim/comments/29692h/my_friends_and_i_just_released_vim_awesome_a_new/cihvq0e
2. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7951591

Ignore case when scraping GitHub-based plugins

GitHub ignores cases in repo locations, but unfortunately we don't. This means that when we discover references to GitHub repos that are the same but cased differently, we sadly treat them as different plugins.

For example:

http://vimawesome.com/plugin/asynccommand
http://vimawesome.com/plugin/asynccommand-all-too-well

The above refers to the same plugin but their GitHub repo names are asynccommand and AsyncCommand respectively.

Consider one-liner alternative in pathogen.vim installation instructions

git clone accepts an optional <directory> argument, which specifies the destination of the cloned repo.

Please consider as an alternative to your

cd ~/.vim/bundle
git clone https://github.com/tpope/vim-fugitive

the equally idiomatic, but more explicit and less intrusive ($PWD!)

git clone https://github.com/tpope/vim-fugitive ~/.vim/bundle/vim-fugitive

Of course I'll understand if you reject the idea for aesthetic reasons :)

Make pressing back button to go back to search results work better

Results and scroll position should be cached and feel like clicking "back" on a normal non-single-page-app website.

Add a "recent" section

It'd be really cool if vimawesome could show all the new vim plugins that people are making. This could be done with a "recent" or "new" section of the site.

Add form validation to the submit page

http://vimawesome.com/submit

Submitted plugins just get appended to a table for review. We launched in a hurry. :)

`/api/*` view handlers should return content type `application/json`

Clicking on the top bar on a plugin page takes you to a non-existent page

From a comment on HN:

This is pretty cool. However, clicking on a plugin takes you to [1](for example). Clicking on the header there takes you to 2. This is probably not the intended behaviour.

The header probably shouldn't even be a link.

Sidebar category menu items cannot be clicked on iOS

Open vimawesome.com on iOS mobile Safari. Tap "Language". Nothing happens. However, the "Submit plugin" button still works.

Keyboard shortcut to take you back to search from plugin page

When I am browsing plugins, I often want to go back to the search page easily. It would be great if / worked on plugin pages.

Versioning API

This is a cool site. I'm wondering if it could be the missing piece that finally enables a real plugin manager (as opposed to the glorified runtime path manipulators and git clone wrappers we have today). The first step would be to scrape versions and downloads from vim.org and tags and archives from github and make them available via the API. Any interest in pursuing this?

I can certainly help with the implementation, but I think my primary contribution would be on the VimL side of things.

I'll pop in on IRC in case anyone wants to have a more immediate discussion.

On plugin details page, show other plugins often used with this one

Since we scrape dotfiles repos, it's possible to determine plugins that are frequently used together.

Thanks https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7951968 for the suggestion.

Cache with Redis

We use a stupid simple in-memory cache right now, and cache only a subset of URLs.

Stats data is not updated

I'm pretty sure stats data is not updated at all.
E.g. syntastic page counts 3811 stars, while that's actually 4450 on github page

Unclear how to add multiple tags in submit form

http://vimawesome.com/submit

I've no idea how to add both "Plugin" and "Plugin mngr" as tags. Are tags comma-separated? Semicolon-separated? Surely not space-separated, since tags can have embedded spaces!

Attempts to discover the separator by trying '; ' or ',' and expecting a completion popup when I started typing were a failure: I didn't get a completion popup.

Add VAM to install instructions box

Add support for https://github.com/MarcWeber/vim-addon-manager to

Add a software license

Great site, guys.

I was curious about the license for the code but couldn't seem to find it. Could one of you guys add a LICENSE file with that info?

Syntax highlight code blocks in long descriptions

By doing something like this: https://github.com/chjj/marked#highlight

Request: Login and user profiles.

Allow people to login, have a profile, and own plugins. Let plugins have stars, likes, or similar.

Any user can edit plugin categories and tags

Hi guys,
any user could wreak havoc to site categories and tags. I think this is not right, but maybe I'm missing something..

http://cl.ly/image/220C342V0x2T

Markdown not working for some plugin

http://vimawesome.com/plugin/vim-python-pep8-indent
https://github.com/hynek/vim-python-pep8-indent