These are high-level notes on how to use Vim's native package manager.

It has been available since Vim v8.

Read the manual with :help packages.

Many people use git-submodules for package management.

What does Vim do when Vim starts?

  1. Process your .vimrc file, and then load plugins as follows.
  2. Scan for directories under pack/*/start/ (these are the plugins).
  3. Add those directories to runtimepath.
  4. Load the associated plugins.
  5. If appropriate, load the appropriate syntax.

Running packloadall in .vimrc will load plugins earlier.

Directory structure:

~/.vim
  pack/
    <packageName1>/
      README
      start/ <-------- loaded automatically
        <pluginName1>/
          plugin/ <------- the plugin files 
          syntax/ <------- its syntax files
        <pluginName2>/
          plugin/
          syntax/
      opt/ <----------- loaded optionally
        <pluginName3>/
          plugin/
          syntax/
        <pluginName4>/
          plugin/
          syntax/