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Comment by twp | Hacker News Reader

If you want true Neovim in VSCode check out

  https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=asvetliakov.vscode-neovim

You get a real, actual VIM (no half-assed bindings), and all the bells and whistles that come with VSCode.

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Maybe you can clear up a little confusion on my part. I looked at that link and realised that for some weird reason there are two different versions of the extension by the same developer, and the one I had installed is the other one with 93K installs (not the one you linked above with 400K). What's up with that and why doesn't he just go with the better version of the extension; what are the differences?

I feel like using this extension is a little buggy. Especially around undo / redo actions being captured in “format on save” type actions that happen thanks to jslint or other tools.

Yes I've tried to use the neovim plugin many times - but always run into some annoying bug, usually due to an interaction with another extension or VSCode feature. It has >400k installs though so it must be working for some people.

> but always run into some annoying bug, usually due to an interaction with another extension or VSCode feature.

That has generally been my experience using VSCode, unfortunately.

Can I use the VS Code C++ extensions still?

Yes, vscode-neovim makes VSCode's editor be Neovim. It works very well with other VSCode extensions. For example, you can type `gd` to go to the definition of a C++ identifier.

they emulate the whole command / move / location layer in js ?

I think that's the usual approach for Vim mode in other editors. But this extension in particular:

> This extension uses a fully embedded Neovim instance, no more half-complete Vim emulation!

No, they run a headless neovim process in the background and sync its state with vscode

To add to what sibling commenters have said, you can also configure this extension to use a specific Neovim binary on your system, and you can also configure it to use/load the same Neovim config you use when you use Neovim in the terminal. That's what I do.

It's really the better (Neo)?vim extension in my opinion, but it has a lot less installs than the other popular extension, called just "Vim" (6.656M installs vs. 400K installs) that extension AFAIK actually emulates Vim in JavaScript, I used it for about a year in 2018, before the other extension "VSCode Neovim" was released in 2019 and remember not having a good experience using it then (to compare, the extension "Vim" was released in Nov. 2015).

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