Skip to main content

How to use the NeoVim AppImage in VSCode on Linux

The Neovim logo
Getting the latest version of NeoVim installed and running correctly on my Pop OS Linux installation turns out to be surprisingly difficult. The PopShop app store installs either a very old version of NeoVim, or an up-to-date version that's sandboxed -- both options don't work with VSCode.

I'm using the Debian & Ubuntu derived Pop OS on my IdeaPad 5. This means if I want to install software, I can use apt -- but that will only install software packages that are in the distribution's package repositories.

Usually that's not a problem, but sometimes the version of the software I want to install is not as current as I might like.

That's exactly the problem I have right now with NeoVim.

sudo apt  install neovim  # version 0.6.1-3

I want to use NeoVim as my editor in VSCode with the excellent VSCode Neovim plugin. But, as of this writing, the plugin requires version 0.9 or greater, so I need to install a more current version -- or even better, the latest version of NeoVim, 0.9.4.

Installing NeoVim: the AppImage

After some trial and error, I found that the latest AppImage Neovim package works with VSCode. Here's how to install it:

  1. Download nvim.appimage and configure as described in the Linux (x64) section from Release Nvim release build · neovim/neovim.
  2. Move the AppImage to your preferred AppImage folder (mine is ~/Applications)
  3. At the command prompt, go to your AppImage folder and run chmod u+x nvim.appimage && ./nvim.appimage to ensure the nvim AppImage will run on your system.
  4. Update the Vscode-neovim › Neovim Executable Paths: Linux with the absolute path to the nvim.appimage file. This means no ~ characters -- instead, something like this: /home/accountname/Applications/nvim.appimage (your exact path will be different).
  5. Reload VSCode.

I was not able to get either the Flatpak or Snap versions of NeoVim to work with the VSCode Neovim plugin, because these types of packages are intentionally sandboxed to keep your system safe.

But the AppImage worked exactly as expected, and I can use the latest and greatest version of NeoVim. I'm back to coding in VSCode with all of the vim movement commands literally at my fingertips.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Joomla 1.5 Directory Status: Writeable

[UPDATED] Joomla 1.5 is acting flaky on one of our installations because the directories are set to ‘unwriteable’. To see the their current state, log in as Super Administrator and go to Help > System Info > Directory Permissions . Elsewhere, it's been suggested that the specified directories must be set to “world-writeable” (777). This works, but it is a very bad idea , since it means anyone can change your files! Not cool. Fixing Security with User and Group Settings To perform these changes, you need shell (command line) access to your server. If you don't have it, you can beg your host to make these changes for you, or switch to a Joomla-friendly host. I'm going to assume that you are using a LAMP (Linux/Apache/MySQL/PHP) server because if you're not, then ... well, these instructions should work in principle, but the specifics for your server may be quite different. Here's the issue: you, the FTP user, need full access to your files. So does Joomla,...

Essential Firefox Add-Ons For the Cloud

If you don't want to be tied down to a desktop, you need direct access to your computer in the cloud. Since Firefox runs just about everywhere, it's a good place to start to set up a reliable way to access your accounts. Blog & Social  Delicious Bookmarks is the recommended and official Firefox add-on for Delicious, the world's leading social bookmarking service (formerly del.icio.us). It integrates your bookmarks and tags with Firefox and keeps them in sync for easy, convenient access. Syncing slows down startup, though. ScribeFire Blog Editor is a blog editor that integrates with your browser and lets you easily post to your blog. They've also integrated their affiliate Quick Ads advertising program, which I haven't tried.

Virus scan Windows using a Linux live CD

[There's been quite a bit of interest in this post and I've expanded on it quite a bit. Please post any comments or questions to help me improve this guide. - Neil] Keith and I have both run into situations where we want to recover a Windows computer by cleaning it up with a Linux Live (bootable) CD distro. This offers several advantages to cleaning up an infected or compromised computer by booting into Windows: It prevents the malware, if it exists, from jumping from the infected computer or partition we are trying to fix to the repair partition or boot medium. If we boot from a CD, there's actually no way to alter the boot medium, since it's read-only. Naturally, we started with Knoppix -- download it here . Installing and scanning with F-Prot is covered in this Knoppix.net discussion thread, Virus Scan from LiveCD , which describes how to install F-Prot from the command line using apt-get. Also, In Knoppix 5.1, you can boot from the Knoppix CD and install F-P...