Portable Vim Config

I keep my vimrc in a git repository on my home firewall, which is accessible via SSH.

This makes it easy to bootstrap a new workstation:

[jason@foo ~]$ sudo brew install git
[jason@foo ~]$ git clone --recursive jason@home.eraserhead.net:/srv/git/my_stuff.git
[jason@foo ~]$ echo "source ~/my_stuff/vimrc" > ~/.vimrc

Assuming you have plugins and not just a solitary vimrc, Vim needs to find other plugins installed within your repository. I have a vimfiles directory in mine and added this to the top of my vimrc:

let &runtimepath = expand("<sfile>:p:h") . "/vimfiles," . &runtimepath

This works well enough that I haven’t touched it in a few years, in spite of having twiddled and written a few plugins. Remember that some plugins like CommandT will need to be built on each system.