I've shied away from using preassembled vim toolkits, but I saw the pre-release for AstroVim 3.0 (just released) & really appreciated how configuration is now done in each plugin's native format, with AstroVim defaults one can extend (or ignore).

Previously AstroVim like many toolkits had it's own configuration system, which was top down & not 1:1 for the plugins. Now there's a much more bottom-up configurability granted to users, and the existing docs on configuring whichever plugin still stand.

This has greatly assuage my concerns abouts picking an off the shelf vim toolkit & I've become a happy new AstroVim convert.

I also appreciate the leap from the Packer plugin manager — which AstroVim 2 & I had been using — to lazy.nvim. It's much faster & requires much less hand holding. Most work is async, automatically compiled. And LazyVim detects changes & deals with it, rather than needing to kick the plugin manager.

Really great set of leading edge tools, well integrated here. Sensible defaults for a lot of good things one would have to wire up themselves. Divine option to have. The switch in configuration style should become a textbook example of core computing principles, is such a night & day practical difference: an example of how dangerous over-encapsulation can be & how nice having a less compositional & more aggregative model can be.

There's a decent amount of good discussion on Reddit on the new 3.0: https://old.reddit.com/r/neovim/comments/11ntuef/astronvim_v...