vscode-neovim future & organization

[asvetliakov]

As you probably have noticed, i have been inactive during long time.

Initially this extension was started as fun/POC project - "what if i'd use vscode insert mode capabilities and communicate with neovim for modal editing? Would it be possible?". But it grew into something that I and many others have been using and continue to use every day. Thank you all for your support, suggestions, PRs, really appreciate that.

So, to prevent a stuck state if i'd disappear again (that doesn't mean i will stop support & maintain), i would like to do reorganization here and ask you to participate in discussion how should it look like:

1. Should we move the repo to a new organization, or leave it in the current repo?
2. Anyone want to become an additional maintainer here ?
3. How should we handle donations ? When i enabled them, i really haven't expected that anyone would donate, that was very pleasing, thank you for your support! Btw, in a case if the repo will be maintained by multiple maintainers, i can't feel the right to receive donations anymore. They can be accumulated within org account, transferred to neovim project, or just disabled.

Let me know what do you think. Thank you

[Shatur95]

What if move it to VSCodeVim organization? This could make the project more popular and attract new contributors.

[asvetliakov]

What if move it to VSCodeVim organization? This could make the project more popular and attract new contributors.

That can be an option. However i'm not sure if VSCodeVim org would want to adopt us 😄 The scopes of projects are different

[Shatur95]

Yes, the scopes are different, but it's great. Your plugin is for Neovim users that want to embed Neovim inside VSCode. Vim plugin is for Vim users that want to emulate Vim behavior without Neovim installation. And the user himself chooses which plugin suits him best.

[slavoutich]

Should we move the repo to a new organization, or leave it in the current repo?

Probably if you find co-maintainers, then it would be useful. Migration is 100% smooth :)

Anyone want to become an additional maintainer here ?

Don't have any competence in the subj :(

How should we handle donations?

If they enable you or someone else to spend part of work time on vscode-neovim, their goal is achieved. You decide.

[Shatur95]

Suggestion: Rename the extension from "Neo Vim" to "Neovim" (this is how it written on the official website) and add Neovim icon in VSCode marketplace.

[ngscheurich]

Hi, @asvetliakov—thanks for your work on this!

Should we move the repo to a new organization, or leave it in the current repo?

I don't have a strong preference here, but I do feel that the name should be changed. I'd recommend renaming the project to something like "NeoCode" so that it's distinguishable from the Neovim project (e.g. no special context is needed). I'd also recommend adding a logo of some kind, perhaps that incorporates elements of VS Code and Neovim, so that it looks more legitimate in the marketplace. I'd be willing to build a logo if you're interested.

Anyone want to become an additional maintainer here ?

I am interested in contributing, as Vim/Neovim with a modern frontend is quite appealing to me. I can't take on the burden of being a full- or even co-maintainer, but if we can get together a group of people, I'd like to be part of it.

How should we handle donations ?

If the project is already receiving non-trivial donations, I'd be for passing all of those on to the Neovim project or a worthwhile charity.

[ngscheurich]

I'd also recommend adding a logo of some kind, perhaps that incorporates elements of VS Code and Neovim

I added a proposal that we can perhaps iterate on in #325.

[asvetliakov]

Suggestion: Rename the extension from "Neo Vim" to "Neovim" (this is how it written on the official website) and add Neovim icon in VSCode marketplace.

I don't think it's right to use existing 3rd party branding. Although it's scoped to vscode, but still can be confusing to users and especially search systems.

NeoCode

👍

I added a proposal that we can perhaps iterate on in #325.

Awesome!

[ftassi]

@asvetliakov thank you for your work so far and also for raising this issue about the future of the project. I'm not sure how many co-maintainer showed up since you opened this issue, but I think that the most crucial matter here is involving as much people as possible in the development of the project. Have you thought about labeling some issue with "easy pick" to ease new developers into the project? It could help a bit.

I'm migrating to vscode / noevim right now, so I'm not really aware of the state of this repo yet, so the following question may sound a bit silly, but still.... How many maintainers are there, other than you, right now? Is this still a "one man band" project :wink: ?

[colinxs]

@asvetliakov You could consider seeing if the Neovim devs would be open to moving vscode-neovim to the Neovim org. It looks like theres a Visual Studio (not Code) extension there already: https://github.com/neovim/VSNvim.

Now that Onivim has abandoned Neovim this could be a good way for Neovim to showcase its use as a headless backend :)

[justinmk]

I have been developing a vscode extension for work, so I may be able to help here.

[asvetliakov]

@ftassi Only me primary. There are few active people here who also help/send PR too. Easy pick/Good first issue is good suggestion 👍

@colinxs @justinmk I don't mind moving it to neovim org 💯 . Will also greatly increase the visibility and improve API/features feedback/communication.

[DAlperin]

A bit late to this thread but I would definitely be happy to help out around here! I have a local fork with a bunch of bug fixes and such that when I have a free moment from work I would love to upstream at some point.

[asvetliakov]

@DAlperin
you definitely should look into #334 before making a PR(s). A lot of things have changed there

[DAlperin]

Oh! Very cool. Looks like some of my changes still apply but I will definitely have to rework them a bit.

[Shatur95]

Suggestion: provide issue templates to improve issues quality and ask user in this templates to search for similar issue first before opening a new one.

[Nico-Guyon]

A bit late also but I would like to get involved on this project.

I was using vscodevim before switching to vscode neovim which I find much powerful and fast.
However lately an annoying bug where neovim can't find the windows id of the editor keeps appearing.
It's annoying me enough to make me want to fix this one, so I forked the project and started looking into it.

This extension became part of my everyday work and I'd like it to stay that way.
Is there a list of all maintainers somewhere, how this project is organized ?

[Shatur95]

It's annoying me enough to make me want to fix this one, so I forked the project and started looking into it.

Looking forward for the fix :)

Currently @theol0403 and me can merge PR's. But we are missing TS developers.

[theol0403]

Yeah, after we both contributed to this repo the owner added us as collaborators to help manage PRs. However, he is still in charge of development, it's just that his time to work on this project is intermittent as far as I can tell. PRs and bug reports are very appreciated, and from what I've seen he does have the time to comment on significant PRs. But yeah we are just missing core TS developers.

Also, while much can definitely be done to improve this plugin, like fixing bugs and improving features, significant performance and usability improvements are more often than not being blocked by vscode devs, like the notorious lag that is caused from vscode plugin host being singlethreaded which makes neovim in insert mode impractical (even though in theory it can totally be done).