Advanced configuration of the Custom Folder

Introduction

NvChad uses git for updates. This implies that at every update, part or the whole configuration is overwritten by new commits. Consequently it would be useless to make customizations within the default configuration.

To solve this problem the NvChad developers have set up the custom folder which must be placed in .config/nvim/lua/, and is designed to house all of your custom configuration files. Below we have a representation of the basic structure of a standard NvChad installation.

nvim/
├── examples
│   ├── chadrc.lua
│   └── init.lua
├── init.lua
├── LICENSE
├── lua
│   ├── core
│   └── plugins
└── plugin
    └── packer_compiled.lua

Structure Creation

To start the customization we have to create the custom folder that will contain all our files, and also the plugins folder that will contain the configuration files of our plugins. Since the folders will not be present, we will use the -p flag to tell the mkdir command to create the missing folders. The command will be as follows:

mkdir -p ~/.config/nvim/lua/custom/plugins

The structure of the nvim/lua folder should now look like this:

├── lua
│   ├── core
│   ├── custom
│   │   └── plugins
│   └── plugins

The choice of path is not accidental. It responds to the need to preserve this folder from updates. Without this, with each update the folder would simply be deleted as it is not part of the repository.

The NvChad developers have prepared a .gitignore file for this, which determines its exclusion.

cat .config/nvim/.gitignore 
plugin
custom
spell

Structure of the Custom Folder

The structure of the custom folder used for this guide is as follows:

custom/
├── chadrc.lua
├── init.lua
├── mappings.lua
├── override.lua
└── plugins
    ├── init.lua
    └── lspconfig.lua

We are going to analyze its contents, and briefly describe the files it contains. The files will be analyzed in detail later, on the pages dedicated to them.

• chadrc.lua - This file allows for the override of default configurations. It also allows plugins to be overridden so that they can then be associated with override.lua configurations. For example, it is used to save the interface theme with:

M.ui = {
  theme = "everforest",
}

• init.lua - This file is executed after the primary init.lua file, contained in nvim/lua/core/, and allows the execution of personalized commands at NvChad startup.

• mappings.lua - Allows for the setting of custom commands. These commands are normally used to abbreviate standard commands. An example is the abbreviation of the command :Telescope find_files, which can be set in mappings.lua like so:

["\\\\"] = { "<cmd> Telescope find_files<CR>", "file finder" },

allows you to retrieve :Telescope find_files by typing two \\

• override.lua - This file contains the custom configurations that replaces the default ones. This is made possible thanks to the override effected upstream in chadrc.lua.

Let us now move on to the plugins folder. This folder contains all the configuration files of the various plugins installed. It also contains the init.lua file for the customizations. The init.lua file should contain the plugins we want to install on our IDE. Once inserted and configured, they will be installable via the :PackerSync command.

The only plugin required is neovim/nvim-lspconfig, which enables LSP (language server) functionality for advanced editing.

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Última atualização: 5 de setembro de 2022

Author: Franco Colussi

Contributors: Steven Spencer