Use global neovim installation

[shahamran]

Hi @amitds1997, thanks for this plugin, I'm looking forward to be able to use it!
My (company's) remote host has an unsupported OS (ubuntu 18.04). How do I make remote-nvim use the globally installed nvim on remote, instead of trying to install its own version?

[shahamran]

To clarify, when prompted for version selection, I used "Nightly version (locally installed)", but in the "Installing Neovim" step, this was printed:

Neovim installation is corrupted. Would re-install.

[amitds1997]

Currently, the plugin does have an option to use the system Neovim, but it is only shown when the plugin determines that binary for the OS is not available (e.g. FreeBSD, etc.) and the remote system has a Neovim binary on the path. I guess we can provide this option universally in the same select menu as the rest of the version selection.

[shahamran]

Thanks for the quick reply!
The issue with ubuntu18 is that it uses an old version of glibc, so while technically there is an official build for this platform, in practice you need to download an unofficial build (or build from source).
As I see it, any (or all) of the options you listed will be helpful:

• Add option to use globally installed neovim on remote, even if a binary for that platform exists.
• Add option to build from source.
• Detect glibc version and use the unofficial build (only for nightly): https://github.com/neovim/neovim-releases/releases.

[shahamran]

I think adding a config option for passing arguments to the remote neovim_install.sh will solve this, no?
Then I can just set -m source or -m system.

[amitds1997]

Thanks for doing the relevant research. Allowing that configurability would definitely help. But this would be cumbersome to do right now, as the plugin configuration is not host specific and I doubt you want to build from source for all your remote machines and that would make it a hassle to go change it in your config every time.

For now, I am thinking simplifying the selection menu to always provide the user with option to use system wide Neovim installation can help. Later on, I hope to build a single form using something like https://nui-components.grapp.dev/docs/components/form to create a single form that would simplify the configuration quite a bit and make it easy for me to maintain as well.

Let me know what you think about this "workaround" for now, and I would send out a PR tom to add this.

[shahamran]

Always providing the "use system neovim" option would be great, thanks!

[amitds1997]

Starting v0.3.3, you should have the option to use the remote Neovim installation, if available.