Packer.nvim: Compared to dein?

[krisfans]

Hi, could you briefly compare packer to dein (if you have experience with it)? Thanks!

[wbthomason]

It's been a while since I used dein, so this might be out of date, but I'll try:

• dein has been around much longer, and @Shougo is a wizard, so I'm sure it has fixed issues that packer hasn't, probably has tricks that we don't, etc.
• Both packer and dein offer a large number of ways to defer loading plugins - I think the sets of features here are roughly equal, though I haven't done a careful analysis.
• dein has some features that packer doesn't and won't, like configuring via TOML
• packer also has some features that dein doesn't, like Luarocks integration and (soon) integrated startup profiling
• packer is easiest to use from Lua; dein is easiest to use from Vimscript
• dein may be compatible with Vim; packer is only compatible with Neovim
• packer uses native packages (for now); dein uses rtp-modification
• packer loads plugins via a generated file; I think dein does something similar but doesn't cache/generate the same set of information
• packer has a plugin operation display built in; I don't think dein does

Overall, I think dein and packer have a lot of similarities, but dein is absolutely the more mature option. I think packer's strengths (for me) lie in expressivity of configuration, as well as a few features we already have or are working on (e.g. Luarocks, splitting configs across multiple files, profiling, etc.) that are newer. Both are good options, in my opinion, and I hope that packer can get to dein's level of polish!