For a while now, I’ve been using Pathogen to manage my vim plugins as bundles. I thought I was making things easier for myself by using git submodules to help organize those plugins, but submodules aren’t the best method for deploying a vim environment in multiple places.

Fortunately for me, other, smarter people did this same thing and decided to fix it. This blog post by James Lai details moving from almost the exact same system as mine to Vundle, a newer and very vim-centric way of managing plugins. You list your plugins in your vimrc, you update them with vim (even though they are managed with git), and your vim environment is consistent everywhere.

I just migrated from Pathogen to Vundle, and I want to document the process.

First things first: clone Vundle into your bundle/ directory.

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❯ git clone https://github.com/gmarik/Vundle.vim.git bundle/Vundle.vim

The Vundle quick start guide does a great job of getting you started, so if you’re just looking to use Vundle without any prior bundle management, I would start there. If you were managing your vim plugins with Pathogen and git submodules, the switch to Vundle is straightforward but requires a few more steps.

At the top of my vimrc I added a new Vundle-specific section and added the code from the quick start guide.

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" Of course
set nocompatible

" Required Vundle setup
filetype off
set runtimepath+=~/.vim/bundle/vundle
call vundle#rc()

Bundle 'gmarik/vundle'

Next, I wanted to add all the bundles I already use. git submodule foreach can actually help here.

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❯ git submodule foreach git remote -v
Entering 'bundle/airline'
origin  https://github.com/bling/vim-airline.git (fetch)
origin  https://github.com/bling/vim-airline.git (push)
Entering 'bundle/characterize'
origin  https://github.com/tpope/vim-characterize.git (fetch)
origin  https://github.com/tpope/vim-characterize.git (push)

[...]

I then just copied the GitHub user and repository name (the path portion of the remote URL minus “.git”) and passed that to Vundle’s Bundle command.

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" Better status line
Bundle 'bling/vim-airline'

" ga for character descriptions
Bundle 'tpope/vim-characterize'

[...]

Now we need to remove the existing submodules. One of the big pains of using git submodules is removing them when you no longer need them. This made trying out plugins harder than it needed to be, and it makes the transition to Vundle a bit more complicated.

I reference this Stack Overflow post about removing git submodules every time I need to remove a plugin I was just trying out without fail. The command to remember is git submodule deinit. You can deinit all submodules in a given directory all at once.

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❯ git submodule deinit bundle/
Cleared directory 'bundle/airline'
Submodule 'bundle/airline' (https://github.com/bling/vim-airline.git) unregistered for path 'bundle/airline'
Cleared directory 'bundle/characterize'
Submodule 'bundle/characterize' (https://github.com/tpope/vim-characterize.git) unregistered for path 'bundle/characterize'

[...]

Then you need to explicitly remove all the bundles. Since Vundle is already in bundle/vundle, we need to remove each separate plugin bundle directory instead of blowing away the entire bundle/ directory.

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❯ git rm bundle/airline bundle/characterize [...]
rm 'bundle/airline'
rm 'bundle/characterize'

[...]

It woud be a good idea to commit your staged changes here, which at this point should just be submodule removal.

If you were using Pathogen, don’t forget to remove any setup from your vimrc.

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" Store pathogen itself in bundle/
runtime! bundle/pathogen/autoload/pathogen.vim

" Start it up
silent! call pathogen#infect()
silent! call pathogen#helptags()

It also helps to add bundle/ to your .gitignore. Vundle now puts all plugins there, but you don’t have to manually manage them any more.. Just add bundle/** to your vim environment’s .gitignore file.

Now, open up vim and run :BundleInstall. All your vim bundles will be cloned and managed by Vundle, and you don’t have to worry about updating submodules and running git submodule foreach everywhere you have a vim environment.

To update and migrate any existing vim environments on other machines, git pull in the migration changes, which shouldn’t conflict as long as you were up to date to the commit before the migration. Then clone Vundle with git clone https://github.com/gmarik/Vundle.vim.git bundle/vundle and install your plugins with vim +BundleInstall +qall.

If you were not up to date to right before your migration changes, you’ll probably have to manually remove all submodules by following the instructions above and resolve some conflicts when pulling changes in. Since you’re trying to delete all of bundle/, this should be relatively painless: just delete bundle/ and git rebase --skip any submodule update commits.

And now you’re using Vundle! Add some new bundles into your vimrc, run :BundleInstall, and you’re up and running. I found some that I’m going to try out in joegoggins’s vimrc and in the Vundle setup documentation.