That was the issue for me, there actually is quite a bit of churn in the Neovim plugins ecosystem compared to VSCode (Packer vs Lazy for plugin management is just the latest iteration). I used to have Neovim plugins all built out but the churn was too much for me.
I've used vim-plug for over a decade and it's been working fine. Yes there has been a lot of churn within some plugins, but overall it hasn't been that bad in my opinion.
And with lazy tracking plugin versions in a lock file, it's easy enough to pin plugins to a known good version whenever something breaks.
(I finally rewrote my entire config, and lazy is vastly better than vim-plug. I should've done so sooner.)
What's better about it? I ask because I've been using `Plug` since I switched from pathogen (what feels like) an eternity ago and I don't really know any reason to switch because it just sort of works...? Every few years or whatever I'll overhaul the config (not a choice but it just sort of happens) and I'm curious whether switching plugin management plugin has a point.
- You can specify plugins dependencies, instead of having everything in a big list.
- You can separate each plugin setup/configuration into separate files.
- It tracks plugin versions in a lock file that you can commit into git. Makes it easy to identify plugins that breaks and lets you pin it to a known good version.
- Nicer UI to install and update plugins, including a git log for each plugin.
- Lazy loading of plugins. Not critical, but it does make a difference if you have a few slow plugins that you need occasionally or just a lot of plugins.
- Profile plugin startup times in a nice way.
Small customized config also means smaller and more precise changes. I haven't touched mine in quite a long time, only usually to add that cool trick or plugin that pops up every so often.