Installing the latest Neovim on Debian

nvim-debian.md

Installing the latest Neovim on Debian

1. Install build prerequisites

   sudo apt install ninja-build gettext cmake curl build-essential git
   

2. Clone the repository

   git clone https://github.com/neovim/neovim
   

3. Change to the repository directory

   cd neovim
   

   • If you want the stable release, also run

     git checkout stable
     

4. The build type determines the level of used compiler optimizations and debug information:

   • Release: Full compiler optimizations and no debug information. Expect the best performance from this build type. Often used by package maintainers.
   • Debug: Full debug information; few optimizations. Use this for development to get meaningful output from debuggers like GDB or LLDB. This is the default if CMAKE_BUILD_TYPE is not specified.
   • RelWithDebInfo ("Release With Debug Info"): Enables many optimizations and adds enough debug info so that when Neovim ever crashes, you can still get a backtrace.

   So, for a release build, just use:

   make CMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release
   

5. Build the DEB-package & install it

    cd build && cpack -G DEB && sudo dpkg -i nvim-linux-x86_64.deb
   

   • This helps ensure clean removal of installed files.
   • Note: This is an unsupported, "best-effort" feature of the Nvim build.