Bob

Struggle to keep your Neovim versions in check? Bob provides an easy way to install and switch versions on any system!

Bob is a cross-platform and easy-to-use Neovim version manager, allowing for easy switching between versions right from the command line.

🌟 Showcase

🔔 Notices

2022-10-29: Moved bob's symbolic link and downloads folder on macos from /Users/user/Library/Application Support to ~/.local/share please make sure to move all of your downloads to the new folder, run bob use <your desired version> and update your PATH
2023-02-13: Bob has recently switched to using a proxy executable for running Neovim executables. To switch from the old method that Bob used, follow these steps:
1. Remove the current Neovim path from your global $PATH environment variable.
2. Delete the following directory: On Unix: ~/.local/share/neovim On Windows: C:\Users\<username>\AppData\Local\neovim
Secondly the name of the downloads directory property in the configuration file has changed. Please refer to the updated list of properties for the new name.
2024-03-04: Due to Neovim's recent MacOS binary changes, bob now supports arm completely, but unfortunately, it comes with some breaking changes specifically for bob's proxy executable. To fix that, follow these steps (which will not be necessary soon):
1. Remove nvim binary from nvim-bin which is located in the same directory the same as the neovim binaries downloads folder.
2. Copy your newly downloaded bob binary and put the copy inside of nvim-bin
3. Rename your bob binary inside nvim-bin to nvim.
2024-05-17: Support for nvim-qt is now deprecated as Neovim no longer supports it in newer releases. If you're currently using nvim-qt, we recommend switching to a different Neovim GUI or using Neovim in the terminal. Please refer to the Neovim documentation for more information on supported GUIs.
2024-05-19: Important notice for users who built Neovim from source using a commit hash before the newest Bob version: Due to recent changes in Bob, these versions will need to be rebuilt. Alternatively, you can manually add a file named full-hash.txt at the root of the directory. This file should contain the full hash of the commit used to build Neovim. This change ensures better tracking and management of versions built from source. We apologize for any inconvenience and appreciate your understanding.

📦 Requirements

Make sure you don't have Neovim already installed via other ways e.g. a package manager.

Building bob

Make sure rustup is installed.

(Optional) openssl if built with native-tls feature.

Building Neovim

For further information refer to the Neovim wiki.

All platforms

CMake
Git

Windows

Visual Studio Build Tools with C++ extension pack

Unix

Clang or GCC

MacOS note: follow these instructions

🔧 Installation

Install from releases

Download the bob release suitable for your platform: either bob-{platform}-x86_64.zip for the standard version or bob-{platform}-x86_64-openssl.zip for the OpenSSL version.
Unzip it
Run it with bob

Install with pacman

On Arch Linux, you can install bob from the extra repository using pacman: pacman -S bob
Run it with bob

Install from source

For the standard version:

cargo install --git https://github.com/MordechaiHadad/bob.git
Run Bob with bob

For the OpenSSL version:

To install, include the --no-default-features --features native-tls flags with your command: cargo install --git https://github.com/MordechaiHadad/bob.git --no-default-features --features native-tls
Run Bob with bob

Install from crates.io

cargo install bob-nvim
Run bob with bob

❓ Usage

A version-string can either be vx.x.x or x.x.x examples: v0.6.1 and 0.6.0

bob use |nightly|stable|latest|<version-string>|<commit-hash>|

--no-install flag will prevent bob from auto invoking install command when using use

Switch to the specified version, by default will auto-invoke install command if the version is not installed already

bob install |nightly|stable|latest|<version-string>|<commit-hash>|

Install the specified version, can also be used to update out-of-date nightly version.

bob sync

If Config::version_sync_file_location is set, the version in that file will be parsed and installed.

bob uninstall [|nightly|stable|latest|<version-string>|<commit-hash>|]

Uninstall the specified version. If no version is specified a prompt is used to select all the versions to be uninstalled.

bob rollback

Rollback to an existing nightly rollback

bob erase

Erase any change bob ever made including Neovim installation, Neovim version downloads and registry changes.

bob list

List all installed and used versions.

bob complete bash|elvish|fish|powershell|zsh

Generate shell completion.

bob update |nightly|stable|--all|

Update existing version, can specify either a version or the flag --all

bob list-remote

List all remote neovim versions available for download.

⚙ Configuration

This section is a bit more advanced and thus the user will have to do the work himself since bob doesn't do that.

Bob's configuration file can be written in either JSON or TOML format. The file should be located at config_dir/bob/config.json or config_dir/bob/config.toml respectively. However, the location of the configuration file can be customized as explained below, to be more specific:

On Linux

/home/user/.config/bob/config.json|toml

On Windows

C:\Users\user\AppData\Roaming\bob\config.json|toml

On MacOS

/Users/user/Library/Application Support/bob/config.json|toml

Increasing Github rate-limit

It is possible to use GITHUB_TOKEN to prevent rate-limit for API calls. There are two ways to do it:

You can prepend any of the bob commands with GITHUB_TOKEN=<your token>

GITHUB_TOKEN=<some token> bob update -a

perform export GITHUB_TOKEN=<your token> and then run bob commands.

export GITHUB_TOKEN=<some token>
bob update -a

Custom Location

Bob's config file location can be configured by using an environment variable called $BOB_CONFIG. Example: export BOB_CONFIG=/path/to/config/config.json|toml

Syntax

Property	Description	Default Value
enable_nightly_info	Will show new commits associated with new nightly release if enabled	`true`
enable_release_build	Compile neovim nightly or a certain hash version as a release build (slightly improved performance, no debug info)	`false`
downloads_location	The folder in which neovim versions will be downloaded to, bob will error if this option is specified but the folder doesn't exist	unix: `/home/<username>/.local/share/bob`, windows: `C:\Users\<username>\AppData\Local\bob`
installation_location	The path in which the proxied neovim installation will be located in	unix: `/home/<username>/.local/share/bob/nvim-bin`, windows: `C:\Users\<username>\AppData\Local\bob\nvim-bin`
version_sync_file_location	The path to a file that will hold the neovim version string, useful for config version tracking, bob will error if the specified file is not a valid file path	`Disabled by default`
rollback_limit	The amount of rollbacks before bob starts to delete older ones, can be up to 255	`3`
github_mirror	Specify the github mirror to use instead of `https://github.com`, example: `https://mirror.ghproxy.com`	`Disabled by default`

Example

// /home/user/.config/bob/config.json
{
  "enable_nightly_info": true, // Will show new commits associated with new nightly release if enabled
  "enable_release_build": false, // Compile neovim nightly or a certain hash version as a release build (slightly improved performance, no debug info)
  "downloads_location": "$HOME/.local/share/bob", // The folder in which neovim versions will be installed too, bob will error if this option is specified but the folder doesn't exist
  "installation_location": "/home/user/.local/share/bob/nvim-bin", // The path in which the used neovim version will be located in
  "version_sync_file_location": "/home/user/.config/nvim/nvim.version", // The path to a file that will hold the neovim version string, useful for config version tracking, bob will error if the specified file is not a valid file path
  "rollback_limit": 3, // The amount of rollbacks before bob starts to delete older ones, can be up to 225
  "github_mirror": "https://github.com" // github or github mirror
}

💻 Shell Completion

Bash

Completion files are commonly stored in /etc/bash_completion.d/ for system-wide commands, but can be stored in ~/.local/share/bash-completion/completions for user-specific commands. Run the command:

mkdir -p ~/.local/share/bash-completion/completions
bob complete bash >> ~/.local/share/bash-completion/completions/bob

This installs the completion script. You may have to log out and log back in to your shell session for the changes to take effect.

Bash (macOS/Homebrew)

Homebrew stores bash completion files within the Homebrew directory. With the bash-completion brew formula installed, run the command:

mkdir -p $(brew --prefix)/etc/bash_completion.d
bob complete bash > $(brew --prefix)/etc/bash_completion.d/bob.bash-completion

Fish

Fish completion files are commonly stored in $HOME/.config/fish/completions. Run the command:

mkdir -p ~/.config/fish/completions
bob complete fish > ~/.config/fish/completions/bob.fish

This installs the completion script. You may have to log out and log back in to your shell session for the changes to take effect.

Zsh completions are commonly stored in any directory listed in your $fpath variable. To use these completions, you must either add the generated script to one of those directories, or add your own to this list.

Adding a custom directory is often the safest bet if you are unsure of which directory to use. First create the directory; for this example we'll create a hidden directory inside our $HOME directory:

mkdir ~/.zfunc

Then add the following lines to your .zshrc just before compinit:

fpath+=~/.zfunc

Now you can install the completions script using the following command:

bob complete zsh > ~/.zfunc/_bob

You must then either log out and log back in, or simply run

exec zsh

for the new completions to take effect.

PowerShell

The PowerShell completion scripts require PowerShell v5.0+ (which comes with Windows 10, but can be downloaded separately for windows 7 or 8.1).

First, check if a profile has already been set

Test-Path $profile

If the above command returns False run the following

New-Item -path $profile -type file -force

Now open the file provided by $profile (if you used the New-Item command it will be ${env:USERPROFILE}\Documents\WindowsPowerShell\Microsoft.PowerShell_profile.ps1

Next, we either save the completions file into our profile, or into a separate file and source it inside our profile. To save the completions into our profile simply use

bob complete powershell >> ${env:USERPROFILE}\Documents\WindowsPowerShell\Microsoft.PowerShell_profile.ps1

🛠️ Troubleshooting

sudo: nvim: command not found This error can be caused when secure_path is enabled in /etc/sudoers like in distros such as Fedora Workstation 37, possible workarounds:

disable secure_path
run sudo env "PATH=$PATH" nvim
set $SUDO_USER to location of bob nvim binary: SUDO_EDITOR='/home/user/.local/share/bob/nvim-bin/nvim

These workarounds were devised by @nfejzic, thanks to him.

❤️ Credits And Inspiration

nvm A node version manager
nvenv A Neovim version manager written by NTBBloodbath

MordechaiHadad/bob

Bob