Original Instructions: http://vimcasts.org/episodes/synchronizing-plugins-with-git-submodules-and-pathogen/ The following instructions assume that your home directory contains a .vimrc file, a .vim directory and a .gvimrc file (optional). Move the .vimrc and .gvimrc files into the .vim directory: //I renamed them without "." so they would be visible in .vimrc mv .vimrc ~/.vim/vimrc mv .gvimrc ~/.vim/gvimrc Create symbolic links so that ~/.vimrc points to the ~/.vim/vimrc file:ln -s ~/.vim/vimrc ~/.vimrc ln -s ~/.vim/vimrc ~/.vimrc ln -s ~/.vim/gvimrc ~/.gvimrc Change to the .vim directory, and initialize it as a git repository: cd ~/.vim git init