[docs] Document all sane ways to get the latest stable neovim release in the README

[Mithrandir2k18]

As mentioned here at #1475 , since neovim is held back on multiple distros like Debian(-based) distros or some Fedoras for example, the README probably should dedicate some space towards the options that are available to these users, as it seemingly causes some issues quite regularly, see #1503 or #1581 as examples.

The question is, which options should we include? To my knowledge there is(no particular order):

• Getting the tarball or the appimage from the release
• Snap
• Flatpack
• Homebrew
• Nix
• Install from source

And probably others I'm forgetting. Personally I've found an extracted appimage to work reasonably well so far, but will probably switch to getting it from nixpkgs via home-manager in the future to save myself the manual hassle involved.

The readme should probably focus on just a few of these that make installing and updating up-to-date (latest release) versions of neovim as easy as possible on as many distros (and also Mac and Windows?) as possible.

[umutondersu]

I am personally using bob. It could also be mentioned as well. For me it is the easiest way to install and manage neovim versions.

[Mithrandir2k18]

I did not know about bob. Wild how far the benefits of the rust toolchain are reaching. If I wasn't using nix already, I'd surely have given bob a try.

Please keep the suggestions and feedback coming, once some sentiment has been gathered here (or after some time has elapsed), I'll prepare a PR for the readme, if nobody else has stepped up by then.

[Mithrandir2k18]

Currently the readme lists the ubuntu-ppa, tarball download, chocolatey installation, dnf/pacman for fedora/arch. Arch shouldn't be an issue, but I personally hate the methods that require lots of manual steps.

For reference, at the time of this comment, neovim 0.11.2 has out for 4 days, 0.11.1 for 38 days and 0.11.0 for 69 days, according to the github releases page.

Bob seems to be the simplest all-plattform method by far. Personally I would remove the ppa, as it is still on 0.11.0 and I recall it being rather sluggish in updating to 0.11 (and it misleadingly had to call neovim releases "unstable"), whereas many plugins had already moved on. Homebrew is really nice, and widely used on Mac (but also on Linux) and seems to update their stable release tag very quickly(already on 0.11.2), so I'd add that. Flatpack also is already on 0.11.2 whereas Snap is on 0.11.1, so if one of them makes it into the readme it should be Flatpack imho. And Nix users probably don't need to be told that nix is an option and that it has up-to-date packages in the latest channel or on unstable.

So personally I'd rewrite the Install Recipes section to add a bit more context about some package managers being slow to update (to explain to beginners why they may want to consider other options) and list only methods that have a proper update command.
As it stands I'd include:

• Bob
• Flatpack
• Homebrew

Since they seem to be the most ergonomic and beginner-friendy to use, and I don't think the readme should explain every available option. Interestingly I haven't used any one of them, so it's not like I'm pushing my personal favourites here.

Is this too narrow?

[rivenirvana]

I think these 3 general methods are fine, then maybe just link to the supported neovim releases (tag/nightly & releases/latest) in the main repo, which provide their generated AppImages, as well as linking to their INSTALL.md? That doc already references distro-specific instructions too, so maybe it's better to defer to that for the neovim package and dedicate this repo's recipes only for the external dependencies kickstart specifically require.

[eccles]

An additional method is to use asdf (https://asdf-vm.com/):

 asdf plugin add neovim
 asdf install neovim latest

Edit .tool_versions and add

 neovim 0.11.2

The version may vary ....

[Mithrandir2k18]

Should we add asdf and mise as well? I have only used either for project-local tooling, I wasn't aware people used them to manage global tools (like neovim) as well. Or do some of you even pin the neovim version per-project? Seems wild to me.

As I see it now the "install neovim" section should cover 3 topics:

• Link to the neovims install.md, but explain that these can be very slow to update, which can cause issues when pulling newer files from kickstart or updating plugins
• List and briefly explain alternate package managers (bob, flatpack, homebrew)
• List and briefly explain tool-managers and list asdf and mise.

The aim of the install neovim section should be to introduce newbies to the fact that neovim and it's plugins/the plugins used by kickstart, are under very active development, that getting up-to-date releases is pretty much necessary when updating plugins/kickstart is desired and that default package managers/install methods may not offer ergonomic solutions to get the latest neovim release.

Keep the feedback coming. By the end of the week, I guess I'll start a PR and we can move the discussion over to there. This is fun, I'm actually learning a bit here :)