How to enable a plugin manager without ~/.vimrc

Question

After using vim for some time now, my ~/.vim/ beginning with my first experiments with vim got really messy over time. So I thought, it would be time to tidy up and to begin with a plugin manager with a clean configuration.

Since I share my configuration over multiple machines, I usually manage my ~/.vim/ path with a git repo. To avoid a big .vimrc, I put my own configuration under ~/.vim/plugin/. This allowed me, to keep all my shared configuration in this folder and to use ~/.vimrc only for machine dependent configuration.

Starting with VAM over NeoBundle and now Vundle I have always the same problem. If I add the required configuration under ~/.vim/plugin/pluginmanager.vim instead of ~/.vimrc, the installed plugins do not load or were only partially loaded. The command :echo &rtp lists the correct bundles, but :scriptnames does not include the installed plugins. If I execute mv ~/.vim/plugin/pluginmanager.vim ~/.vimrc everythings works as expected.

Can anyone explain this behavior and perhaps offer a solution?

My pluginmanager.vim looks like this:

set nocompatible              " be iMproved, required
filetype off                  " required

" set the runtime path to include Vundle and initialize
set rtp+=~/.vim/bundle/Vundle.vim
call vundle#begin()

" let Vundle manage Vundle, required
Plugin 'gmarik/Vundle.vim'
Plugin 'bling/vim-airline'
Plugin 'MarcWeber/vim-addon-mw-utils'
Plugin 'tomtom/tlib_vim'
Plugin 'garbas/vim-snipmate'
Plugin 'honza/vim-snippets'

" All of your Plugins must be added before the following line
call vundle#end()            " required
filetype plugin indent on    " required

My vim installation is version 7.4.52

Thanks, did not know about ~/.vim/vimrc. Seems to be the best solution. Guess I have to update my question title. — Trendfischer

Brett Y Brett Y · Accepted Answer · 2015-03-17T21:58:38

I would recommend using the ~/.vimrc file for general configuration and having another file such as ~/.vimrc.local with your machine specific configuration. You can source ~/.vimrc.local by adding the following to your ~/.vimrc.

if filereadable(glob("~/.vimrc.local")) 
    source ~/.vimrc.local
endif

Credit: http://blog.sanctum.geek.nz/local-vimrc-files/

To solve your issue try adding runtime! bundle/**/*.vim to the end of your pluginmanager.vim file.

How to enable a plugin manager without ~/.vimrc

2 Answers