Spacemacs vs SpaceVim vs pathogen.vim

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Spacemacs

189
200
+ 1
86
SpaceVim

16
58
+ 1
18
pathogen.vim

14
22
+ 1
2

SpaceVim vs Spacemacs vs pathogen.vim: What are the differences?

Introduction

This document provides a comparison between SpaceVim, Spacemacs, and pathogen.vim in terms of their key differences. Markdown code is used throughout to ensure compatibility with websites.

  1. SpaceVim: SpaceVim is a highly configurable Vim distribution designed to provide a comfortable editing experience out of the box. It aims to provide a more modern and intuitive interface compared to the traditional Vim setup.

  2. Spacemacs: Spacemacs, on the other hand, is an Emacs distribution that combines the best of Vim and Emacs. It offers a set of pre-configured packages and comes with advanced features, making it a popular choice among developers who prefer Vim bindings in an Emacs environment.

  3. pathogen.vim: pathogen.vim, unlike SpaceVim and Spacemacs, is not a distribution but a plugin manager for Vim. It simplifies the process of installing and managing plugins within Vim by handling runtime path manipulation.

  4. Configuration: In terms of configuration, both SpaceVim and Spacemacs have their own extensive and highly customizable configuration layers. They provide predefined setups and keybindings, which can be tweaked to fit individual preferences. On the other hand, pathogen.vim does not include any predefined configurations and mainly focuses on managing plugins.

  5. Learning curve: SpaceVim and Spacemacs are both designed to be beginner-friendly and offer a smoother learning curve for newcomers to Vim or Emacs. They provide detailed documentation and support a wide range of programming languages and tools. Pathogen.vim, however, requires a deeper understanding of Vim and plugin management, making it better suited for experienced users.

  6. Community and support: SpaceVim and Spacemacs have active and vibrant communities with frequent updates and ongoing support. They offer forums, issue trackers, and extensive documentation for users to seek help or contribute to the development. Pathogen.vim, being a plugin manager, relies on the larger Vim community for support and updates.

In summary, SpaceVim and Spacemacs are dedicated Vim and Emacs distributions, respectively, offering a comfortable editing experience, while pathogen.vim focuses solely on managing Vim plugins. Their key differences lie in their approach to configuration, learning curve, and community support.

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Pros of Spacemacs
Pros of SpaceVim
Pros of pathogen.vim
  • 14
    Advanced support for Vim key bindings
  • 12
    Discoverability
  • 10
    Easy setup
  • 10
    Never have to touch the mouse
  • 7
    Community-driven configuration
  • 7
    Cross-platform
  • 6
    Documentation
  • 5
    Emacs
  • 4
    Fast-paced development
  • 4
    Evil
  • 4
    Nice UI
  • 2
    Git Integration
  • 1
    Autocompletion
  • 4
    Easy to get started with
  • 4
    Easy to update
  • 3
    Attractive default theme
  • 3
    Realtime Guide
  • 2
    Setting up language servers just works
  • 2
    Better default
  • 2
    It fits the posix-y model of path manipulation

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What is Spacemacs?

Since version 0.101.0 and later Spacemacs totally abolishes the frontiers between Vim and Emacs. The user can now choose his/her preferred editing style and enjoy all the Spacemacs features. Even better, it is possible to dynamically switch between the two styles seamlessly which makes it possible for programmers with different styles to do seat pair programming using the same editor.

What is SpaceVim?

SpaceVim is a Modular configuration, a bundle of custom settings and plugins, for Vim. It got inspired by spacemacs.

What is pathogen.vim?

Manage your 'runtimepath' with ease. In practical terms, pathogen.vim makes it super easy to install plugins and runtime files in their own private directories.

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What companies use Spacemacs?
What companies use SpaceVim?
What companies use pathogen.vim?
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    What tools integrate with Spacemacs?
    What tools integrate with SpaceVim?
    What tools integrate with pathogen.vim?
    What are some alternatives to Spacemacs, SpaceVim, and pathogen.vim?
    Neovim
    Neovim is a project that seeks to aggressively refactor Vim in order to: simplify maintenance and encourage contributions, split the work between multiple developers, enable the implementation of new/modern user interfaces without any modifications to the core source, and improve extensibility with a new plugin architecture.
    Emacs
    GNU Emacs is an extensible, customizable text editor—and more. At its core is an interpreter for Emacs Lisp, a dialect of the Lisp programming language with extensions to support text editing.
    Vim
    Vim is an advanced text editor that seeks to provide the power of the de-facto Unix editor 'Vi', with a more complete feature set. Vim is a highly configurable text editor built to enable efficient text editing. It is an improved version of the vi editor distributed with most UNIX systems. Vim is distributed free as charityware.
    ReSharper
    It is a popular developer productivity extension for Microsoft Visual Studio. It automates most of what can be automated in your coding routines. It finds compiler errors, runtime errors, redundancies, and code smells right as you type, suggesting intelligent corrections for them.
    GitHub Copilot
    It is an AI pair programmer that helps you write code faster and with less work. It draws context from comments and code, and suggests individual lines and whole functions instantly.
    See all alternatives