How To Install neovim on Debian 9

In this tutorial we learn how to install neovim on Debian 9. neovim is heavily refactored vim fork

Introduction

In this tutorial we learn how to install neovim on Debian 9.

What is neovim

neovim is:

Neovim is a fork of Vim focused on modern code and features, rather than running in legacy environments.

msgpack API enables structured communication to/from any programming language. Remote plugins run as co-processes that communicate with Neovim safely and asynchronously.

GUIs (or TUIs) can easily embed Neovim or communicate via TCP sockets using the discoverable msgpack API.

There are three methods to install neovim on Debian 9. We can use apt-get, apt and aptitude. In the following sections we will describe each method. You can choose one of them.

Install neovim Using apt-get

Update apt database with apt-get using the following command.

sudo apt-get update

After updating apt database, We can install neovim using apt-get by running the following command:

sudo apt-get -y install neovim

Install neovim Using apt

Update apt database with apt using the following command.

sudo apt update

After updating apt database, We can install neovim using apt by running the following command:

sudo apt -y install neovim

Install neovim Using aptitude

If you want to follow this method, you might need to install aptitude first since aptitude is usually not installed by default on Debian. Update apt database with aptitude using the following command.

sudo aptitude update

After updating apt database, We can install neovim using aptitude by running the following command:

sudo aptitude -y install neovim

How To Uninstall neovim on Debian 9

To uninstall only the neovim package we can use the following command:

sudo apt-get remove neovim

Uninstall neovim And Its Dependencies

To uninstall neovim and its dependencies that are no longer needed by Debian 9, we can use the command below:

sudo apt-get -y autoremove neovim

Remove neovim Configurations and Data

To remove neovim configuration and data from Debian 9 we can use the following command:

sudo apt-get -y purge neovim

Remove neovim configuration, data, and all of its dependencies

We can use the following command to remove neovim configurations, data and all of its dependencies, we can use the following command:

sudo apt-get -y autoremove --purge neovim

Dependencies

neovim have the following dependencies:

References

Summary

In this tutorial we learn how to install neovim package on Debian 9 using different package management tools: apt, apt-get and aptitude.