Package management for Vim

Question

Emacs 24 looks like it will have a package manager. What package management options are there for Vim?

Answer 1

I'm using a hand-crafted setup for now, but I keep telling myself to give this a shot sometime (the links all have to do with the same plugin):

1. vim-addon-manager: manage and update plugins easily; a plugin by Marc Weber (@ vim.org)
2. GitHub profile of Marc Weber; he's got a number of v-a-m-related repos
3. Vim-plugin-manager @ Vim wiki -- the name of the page is different, but actually the same plugin is meant

Once again, I haven't actually tried this myself yet, but it certainly looks promising.

Answer 2

Vim.org + Vimballs + GetLatestVimScripts is preffered built in way to manage vim plugins at the moment.

:h GetLatestVimScripts

The bad things about it:

• doesn't support Windows (GetLatestVimScripts uses wget AFAIR)
• vim.org has a lot of plugins that are not GLVS and Vimball aware.

Answer 3

There's also pathogen.vim

http://www.vim.org/scripts/script.php?script_id=2332

Although its not exactly what you are asking for it provides a means to manage checkouts from your github's and bitbucket's.

This is good as it separates the plugin's directory structure. So you can checkout a repository of the plugin and get a proper version control rather than rely on the maintainer to update the code. Also it doesn't rely on the plugin author to set up/package as required by the other options cited.

There are some other plugins on vim.org that perform this task although I can't find them at the moment