Managing plugins in Ubuntu

Question

Vim-plug installation on Ubuntu 16.10

I'm a new user of Ubuntu, and I'd like a little bit of help with plugins.

According to this website, I installed vim-plug with this command: curl -fLo ~/.vim/autoload/plug.vim --create-dirs \ https://raw.githubusercontent.com/junegunn/vim-plug/master/plug.vim

I have also created the directory ~/.vim/plugged as suggested. So far I know I have to install my plugins inside (in ~/.vimrc file):

call plug#begin('~/.vim/plugged')

call plug#end()

It is indicated I have to make the content of "Download plug.vim" available inside the 'autoload' directory.

Question 1: What is the 'autoload' directory here?

In fact, I want to install vim-plug to install several plugins like nerdtree. The way I understand the procedure is to go over the website https://github.com/scrooloose/nerdtree, and take only the part scrooloose/nerdtree to install the plugin :

call plug#begin('~/.vim/plugged')

Plug 'scrooloose/nerdtree'

call plug#end()

then execute :PlugInstall.

Question 2 : Where do I have an issue (if there are any)?

Answer 1

Consider using a VIM plugin manager like "Pathogen". They will simplify the management of plugins. Here is excerpt from vim-pathogen site.

mkdir -p ~/.vim/autoload ~/.vim/bundle && \
curl -LSso ~/.vim/autoload/pathogen.vim https://tpo.pe/pathogen.vim

Add to your .vimrc

execute pathogen#infect()
syntax on
filetype plugin indent on

In case you are confused about path of .vimrc, you can run this command in `vim'

:e $MYVIMRC

To add plugins, you can do

cd ~/.vim/bundle
git clone git://github.com/tpope/vim-rails.git
git clone git://github.com/tpope/vim-bundler.git

You can read more about Pathogen here

https://github.com/tpope/vim-pathogen