Neovim setup: plugins only work in .config folder

General system Applications
1

Hello everyone!
I have a major issue getting neovim setup and running on Mate EndeavourOS.
Never worked with arch based distros before so I hope you guys can help me.

I set up neovim with lazy.nvim. in the .config folder, all the plugins work. outside the .config folder, nothing works. I am shure that the plugins and the setup of lazy.nvim should be correct. Otherwise it would not do its job in the .config folder, right?
So I tried to do a symlink and put the nvim folder out of .config into the /home/user/ folder, I also set the XDG_CONFIG_HOME variable in my .bashrc. I am shure that the bashrc is loaded (checked with debug echo) and I am shure that XDG_CONFIG_HOME actually gets set… still no success.

My concrete question: Has anyone ran into a similar situation and have you found a solution?
I tried to search on the web for similar things but had no success and ChatGPT is halucinating hard on this problem…

Thank you for your time and effort in advance!
Greetings

2

I have to admit I don’t understand your question.

I use neovim and in my case I have an alias
alias nvim="NVIM_APPNAME=AstroNvim /usr/bin/nvim"

In this case the config is in ~/.config/AstroNvim/

If I would call it just without NVIM_APPNAME the config would be in ~/.config/nvim/

3

what do you mean inside and outside of .config folder. why are you trying to put it in /home/user.
your nvim setup should be in .config/nvim/

4

Sorry if I was unclear.
So: I tried to put the nvim/ folder with the config in it, in the /home/user/ folder because I thought that way, neovim can “use” the config in the whole /home directory => the idea came from ChatGPT, I now doupt its validity.
Still I did a symlink into the .config/ folder so when neovim sources the configuration it with xdg_config_home/nvim, it will reach the nvim-config-folder. But you are apsolutely right. It should be in there as you said.

about the inside and outside: I experienced the phenomenon that when I open a *.lua file in the .config/nvim folder, all my plugins would work (opening a file like: nvim .config/nvim/lua/plugins/xyz-plugin.lua).
But if I open a open a file like: nvim /home/$USER/random/project/xyz.java the plugins would not work initially. I would have to use the command :source .config/nvim/init.vim to get some plugins to work (namely: lsp would work, no highlighting from treesitter though).

To my setup, yes I guess using something like AstroNvim or LazyVim would make things easier but that is not exactly what I want to use. I want to use neovim as it is with the plugins extended that I want, using the lazy.nvim package manager.

Thank you for your time and answers!

5

I would not blindly trust what ChatGPT says. Sigh.

Play it easy and put the config into ~/.config/nvim. This is the normal procedure.