Vim 7.3 on Ubuntu 12.10 does not have the ftplugin directory anywhere

Question

Vim 7.3 on Ubuntu 12.10

I recently installed vim from the Ubuntu software center. So far I have installed the following vim plugins: NERDTree, rails and ack.

I am taking a course in python and another one in Ruby on Rails. I was surprised that vim did not recognize languages ​​before indentation. By checking various questions and answers on this forum, as well as checking the help of vim, I see that there should be a directory named "ftplugin" in the $ VIMRUNTIME directory. My $ VIMRUNTIME is the same as $ HOME, which is ~ / but my ftplugin is not in my home directory. There is also nothing similar in ~ / .vim. Does this mean that I don't have filetype plugins?

If I do not, where can I get a regular set?

Answer 1

change

Just to be clear: when you install Vim, it does nothing with your home directory. The ~/.vim and any subdirectory must be created by the user: this is where you will place your config so that you are responsible.

Endedit

You must create these directories yourself, no matter which OS you use. On UNIX-like systems (Linux, Mac OS X ...) all your stuff should go into ~/.vim :

 $ cd $ mkdir .vim $ cd .vim 

Some plugins can be placed in specific subdirectories:

 ~/.vim/autoload ~/.vim/plugin etc. 

You can:

• create these directories just like you created ~/.vim and put all the files manually
• $ unzip plugins right in ~/.vim , the necessary directories are created for you
• use some plugin manager like Pathogen or VAM or Vundle and / or VCS ...

I would advise you to start slowly. Just install everything manually: this will help you get more pleasure from all this.

In any case, since you've already installed a bunch of (useless IMO besides rails) plugins, you probably already know all this.

Vim already has the necessary ftplugins, you just need to tell Vim to “activate” them by default. Add these two lines to your ~/.vimrc (create this file if you haven’t already):

 filetype plugin indent on syntax on