nvim + devcontainers (with clipboard support!)

nvim_devcontainers.md

Build container:

• Run devcontainer up (.X11-unix is needed for clipboard to work)

devcontainer up --remove-existing-container --mount "type=bind,source=$HOME/.config/nvim,target=/nvim-config" --mount "type=bind,source=/tmp/.X11-unix,target=/tmp/.X11-unix" --workspace-folder .

Setup container:

TL;DR one-liner:

devcontainer exec --workspace-folder . --remote-env DISPLAY=$DISPLAY bash -c "sudo apt update && sudo apt install -y xclip &&  curl -LO https://github.com/neovim/neovim/releases/latest/download/nvim.appimage && chmod +x nvim.appimage && ./nvim.appimage --appimage-extract && sudo mv squashfs-root /nvim && sudo ln -s /nvim/AppRun /bin/nvim && mkdir -p ~/.config/ && ln -s /nvim-config ~/.config/nvim"

Step by step:

• Enter container:

devcontainer exec --workspace-folder . --remote-env DISPLAY=$DISPLAY zsh

• Install xclip inside the container for clipboard:

sudo apt update && sudo apt install -y xclip

• Instal nvim in the container (the AppImage ensures it is a recent version):

curl -LO https://github.com/neovim/neovim/releases/latest/download/nvim.appimage
chmod +x nvim.appimage
./nvim.appimage --appimage-extract
sudo mv squashfs-root /nvim
sudo ln -s /nvim/AppRun /bin/nvim

• Link nvim config to the correct place (until we can use XDG_CONFIG_HOME directly on devcontainer up):

mkdir -p ~/.config/ && ln -s /nvim-config ~/.config/nvim

Running nvim

devcontainer exec --workspace-folder . --remote-env DISPLAY=$DISPLAY bash -c "nvim ."

Tips and troubleshooting

Clipboard not working

If running Wayland, you may need to do the following on the host:

xhost +local:docker

Have you ever managed to get Lazy nvim working? The plugin manager, not the distribution. Cheers!

Have you ever managed to get Lazy nvim working? The plugin manager, not the distribution. Cheers!

Yes, I used this with Lazy.

Cheers. I was doing something similar and couldn’t get my config working. :check health revealed that no config was detected because of a mismatch of usernames. Still haven’t gotten the mount to work properly. A closer look reveals you’re solving this with symlinks which is clever! I reckon can maybe make the symlink with a dev container.json postcreatecommand