Installation

Prerequisites

• Make sure you have installed the latest version of Neovim v0.7.0+.
• Have git, make, pip, npm, node and cargo installed on your system.
• Resolve EACCES permissions when installing packages globally to avoid error when installing packages with npm.

Install

There are a few ways to install LunarVim.

Stable

No alarm or surprise:

bash <(curl -s https://raw.githubusercontent.com/lunarvim/lunarvim/master/utils/installer/install.sh)

Rolling

All the new features with all the new bugs:

LV_BRANCH=rolling bash <(curl -s https://raw.githubusercontent.com/lunarvim/lunarvim/rolling/utils/installer/install.sh)

You can use this helper script to get the latest neovim binary as well:

bash <(curl -s https://raw.githubusercontent.com/LunarVim/LunarVim/rolling/utils/installer/install-neovim-from-release)

Make sure to check the troubleshooting section if you encounter any problem.

Tips for users in Mainland China

Connection issues may cause installation failures. To avoid them when downloading content from GitHub, please use a mirror.

For example, GitHub Proxy Mirror is a fast mirror for accessing github content. Add the following lines to /etc/hosts to accelerate your installation.

mirror.ghproxy.com github.com
mirror.ghproxy.com raw.githubusercontent.com

Tips for WSL 2 users

While using LunarVim within WSL2, there are a few things one should be aware off:

1. Avoid using LunarVm within the Windows directory, e.g. /mnt/c, due to filesystem performance issues, see WSL#4197.
2. Some WSL2 users have experienced that sourcing the clipboard may be slow. A workaround for that is calling a clipboard manager from the Windows side. Neovim tries using win32yank.exe if it's available. so install it and set the value of clipboard explicitly:

if vim.fn.has "wsl" == 1 then
  vim.g.clipboard = {
    copy = {
      ["+"] = "win32yank.exe -i --crlf", 
      ["*"] = "win32yank.exe -i --crlf",
    },
    paste = {
      ["+"] = "win32yank.exe -o --lf",
      ["*"] = "win32yank.exe -o --lf",
    },
  }
end

3. Some WSL2 users have experienced that opening buffers at startup takes a lot of time. A possible solution is to add the following to your /etc/wsl.conf file:

[automount]
# Set to true will automount fixed drives (C:/ or D:/) with DrvFs under the root directory set above. Set to false means drives won't be mounted automatically, but need to be mounted manually or with fstab.
enabled = false

# Sets the `/etc/fstab` file to be processed when a WSL distribution is launched.
mountFsTab = false

# Set whether WSL supports interop process like launching Windows apps and adding path variables. Setting these to false will block the launch of Windows processes and block adding $PATH environment variables.
[interop]
enabled = false
appendWindowsPath = false

Reference: WSL automount settings

Tips for Neovide users

In order to use lunarvim with Neovide you need to add the following line to your config.lua

vim.o.guifont = "Your font name"

Where Your Font Name is the literal name of the font you want to use. For example "Inconsolata Nerd Font". You will also need to export the right environment variables and call neovide with the apropriate parameters. An easy way to achieve this is to create a little executable script like, for example ~/.local/bin/lvim-gui

#!/bin/sh
# ~/.local/bin/lvim-gui
export LUNARVIM_RUNTIME_DIR="${LUNARVIM_RUNTIME_DIR:-"$HOME/.local/share/lunarvim"}"
export LUNARVIM_CONFIG_DIR="${LUNARVIM_CONFIG_DIR:-"$HOME/.config/lvim"}"
export LUNARVIM_CACHE_DIR="${LUNARVIM_CACHE_DIR:-"$HOME/.cache/lvim"}"

exec neovide -- -u "$LUNARVIM_RUNTIME_DIR/lvim/init.lua" "$@"

Then give it the proper execution permissions

chmod +x ~/.local/bin/lvim-gui

And you can launch from now on like this:

lvim-gui
# or with params
lvim-gui some-file

Uninstall

You can remove LunarVim (including the configuration files) using the bundled uninstall script

bash ~/.local/share/lunarvim/lvim/utils/installer/uninstall.sh
# or
bash <(curl -s https://raw.githubusercontent.com/lunarvim/lunarvim/master/utils/installer/uninstall.sh)