Installing pathogen vim plugin on Windows

Question

I was going to install the pathogen plugin in GVIM for windows but the instructions say to install in the \vimfiles\autoload folder which I don't have. How would I install pathogen?

Sherrer

Answer 1

If it does not exist you can simply create the folder.
Place pathogen.vim inside ...\vim\vimfiles\autoload and you should be good to go.
Bundles go into ...\vim\vimfiles\bundle

Ancelin

Bundles and pathogen should go to user’s own vim configuration directory which is by default in {Disk}:/Users/{User}/vimfiles or {Disk}:/Documents and Settings/{User}/vimfiles. vim/vimfiles is for installing 3rd party plugins by system administrator for a number of users - in case there is a number of users and administrator has tools to normally update them. – Poetaster

@ZyX: If you're the only Windows user using vim is see no problem with placing configuration files directly under vim\vimfiles as it makes your vim setup portable and easy to transfer to other computers. Neither the Windows binaries nor runtime files extract anything to the vimfiles directory last time i checked. – Ancelin

Of course there are no: as I said vimfiles is for third-party plugins. There are problems: first, you are not supposed to be able to write there without running as administrator at all. The fact that you are on home machine that runs Windows does not mean that sitting under root is the best idea. Second, you spread user’s own information across the system thus it makes it more difficult to back up: you don’t need a lot of GiB of data in Program Files reinstallable from the internet or a disk and don’t want to have thousand of rules describing what to backup. – Poetaster

Third, to make it portable you need to do more things. Placing configuration and plugins here or there does not speeds up it much as far as you place it in one place. Fourth, depending on how updating works that does either makes update harder or just does not make it easier. Just answer one question: does updating on windows purge all vim old files that are listed somewhere? If it does not, your variant makes it harder: to be sure your vim runtime files are up-to-date you must remove old data in case some files were removed. Bram won’t remove a single file without a reason. – Poetaster

Answer 2

You can read this document.. GVim for Windows Or You can go to this link Vim and Pathogen for Windows

Nephro

Answer 3

You need to create the folders if absent. Open Vim, type ":e $VIM" and you'll find your vim directory where the vimfiles folder is. (if you did not know that already)

Also, please see gvim pathogen issues for more help.

Dishonor

Never add files to vim own folder. This folder is for vim distribution files only and is likely to be wiped out on vim update. – Poetaster

Oh right. I honestly did not think very thoroughly about that, I meant the home directory's vim folder. ~/.vim in *nix. Might be good to delete my own post then, don't want bad info floating around. – Dishonor