load plugin in vifm 0.14

Question

hi,

what is the best way to load a plugin in:

/home/bob/PROGRAM/BUILD_VIFM/vifm-0.14/data/plugins

After reading the doc I tried in vifm command line :

:plugin viewcolumn

and made:

:set viewcolumns=-{NameLink},8.7{MCSize}

to test it, it seems like the plugin is not loaded properly

Answer 1

Hi,

plugins are loaded from $VIFM/plugins directory. You can symlink directories from sources to there. Also see some instructions on the Wiki.

By the way, there is v0.14.2 with many bugfixes.

Comments

Very good advice from @xaizek and detailed documentation!

After opening this page https://github.com/vifm/vifm, I downloaded the master branch as a ZIP file. The xxh32sum command in Vifm (:! xxh32sum %f %m) returned a value of 7bc99353.

After extracting the ZIP, I opened a terminal and ran:

cd /home/bob/BUILD_VIFM/vifm-master  

./configure  

make  

to compile the program.

After launching Vifm, I ran :version in the Vifm command line, which gave:

┌── Vifm Information ────────
│ Version: 0.14
│ Git info: built out of repository
│ Compiled at: May 14 2025 07:44:01
│
│ Support of extended keys is on
│ Parsing of .desktop files is enabled
│ Without GLib2 library
│ Without magic library
│ With X11 library
│ With dynamic loading of X11 library
│ With file program
│ With -n option for cp and mv
│ With remote command execution
│
│ Terminal name: xterm-256color
│ Max colors: 256
│ Max color pairs: 65536
│ Extended colors: present
│ RGB: -1
│ Direct color: no
│
│ Preview cache size: 0 B
│ Color pairs in use: 18

Is this version 0.14.2 ? If not, where can I find it ?

Afterward, I created the directory /home/bob/.config/vifm/plugins (same as $VIFM/plugins) and copied /home/bob/BUILD_VIFM/vifm-master/data/plugins/viewcolumn into it.

To verify that the plugin was properly recognized, I ran :plugins in the Vifm command line, which returned:

[ loaded] viewcolumn  

Finally, to test the plugin, I ran :set viewcolumns=-{NameLink},8.7{MCSize} in the Vifm command line, which changed the display in one panel—showing links as
before

Pool

after

Pool/ -> /home/bob/_____Pool

and file sizes

before

4 K

after

4096

---

Is this version 0.14.2? If not, where can I find it ?

Basically, it is, with some additions. I thought you were using release tarball, not master.

---

ah got it ! ....even better

https://vifm.info/downloads