How to unload all the plugins from vim and change VIMRUNTIME ?

Question

Hello my problem is this: I have an account at my hosting providers server and I can't install my own copy of vim. So the only personalization I can make is editing .vimrc in my account, but it won't suffice

What I'd Like to do is: on startup I'd like to unload all the plugins and loaded stuff, and tell vim to use other folder as its' runtime.

Any idea how to aproach it?

Answer 1

You can start your vim with -u NONE. From the man-page:

       -u {vimrc}  Use the commands in the file {vimrc}  for  initializations.
               All  the  other  initializations  are skipped.  Use this to
               edit a special kind of files.  It can also be used to  skip
               all  initializations by giving the name "NONE".  See ":help
               initialization" within vim for more details.

For changing $VIMRUNTIME at runtime, use

:let $VIMRUNTIME = "/new/path/"

Answer 2

To answer your question: you just need to set the runtimepath option in your .vimrc file, because your .vimrc is read before any plugins are loaded.

However, the default runtimepath value usually includes the ~/.vim folder (use :set runtimepath? to check), so you should be able to add whatever plugins you need to the ~/.vim folder. Also you can prevent many plugins from loading by adding a line such as :let g:loaded_<plugin name> = 1 to your .vimrc file. Check the help docs for each plugin to find out how to do this.