* Extensive suite of themes for popular color schemes including [solarized][23] (dark and light), [tomorrow][24] (all variants), [base16][32] (all variants), [molokai][25], [jellybeans][26] and others; have a look at the [screenshots][14] in the wiki.
* The master branch tries to be as stable as possible, and new features are merged in only after they have gone through a [full regression test][33].
* Unit testing suite.
## Straightforward customization
If you don't like the defaults, you can replace all sections with standard `statusline` syntax. Give your statusline that you've built over the years a face lift.
This is disabled by default; add the following to your vimrc to enable the extension:
let g:airline#extensions#tabline#enabled = 1
Separators can be configured independently for the tabline, so here is how you can define "straight" tabs:
let g:airline#extensions#tabline#left_sep = ' '
let g:airline#extensions#tabline#left_alt_sep = '|'
## Seamless integration
vim-airline integrates with a variety of plugins out of the box. These extensions will be lazily loaded if and only if you have the other plugins installed (and of course you can turn them off).
Sections can contain accents, which allows for very granular control of visuals (see configuration [here](https://github.com/bling/vim-airline/issues/299#issuecomment-25772886)).
Completely transform the statusline to your liking. Build out the statusline as you see fit by extracting colors from the current colorscheme's highlight groups.
There's already [powerline][2], why yet another statusline?
* 100% vimscript; no python needed.
What about [vim-powerline][1]?
* vim-powerline has been deprecated in favor of the newer, unifying powerline, which is under active development; the new version is written in python at the core and exposes various bindings such that it can style statuslines not only in vim, but also tmux, bash, zsh, and others.
# Where did the name come from?
I wrote the initial version on an airplane, and since it's light as air it turned out to be a good name. Thanks for flying vim!
# Installation
This plugin follows the standard runtime path structure, and as such it can be installed with a variety of plugin managers:
The default setting of 'laststatus' is for the statusline to not appear until a split is created. If you want it to appear all the time, add the following to your vimrc:
For the nice looking powerline symbols to appear, you will need to install a patched font. Instructions can be found in the official powerline [documentation][20]. Prepatched fonts can be found in the [powerline-fonts][3] repository.
Finally, you can add the convenience variable `let g:airline_powerline_fonts = 1` to your vimrc which will automatically populate the `g:airline_symbols` dictionary with the powerline symbols.
# FAQ
Solutions to common problems can be found in the [Wiki][27].
vim-airline strives to make it easy to use out of the box, which means that by default it will look for all compatible plugins that you have installed and enable the relevant extension.
Many optimizations have been made such that the majority of users will not see any performance degradation, but it can still happen. For example, users who routinely open very large files may want to disable the `tagbar` extension, as it can be very expensive to scan for the name of the current function.
If you don't want all the bells and whistles enabled by default, you can define a value for `g:airline_extensions`. When this variable is defined, only the extensions listed will be loaded; an empty array would effectively disable all extensions.
A full list of screenshots for various themes can be found in the [Wiki][14].
# Bugs
Tracking down bugs can take a very long time due to different configurations, versions, and operating systems. To ensure a timely response, please help me out by doing the following:
* Reproduce it with this [minivimrc][7] repository to rule out any configuration conflicts.
* A link to your vimrc or a gist which shows how you configured the plugin(s).
* And so I can reproduce; your `:version` of vim, and the commit of vim-airline you're using.
# Contributions
Contributions and pull requests are welcome. Please take note of the following guidelines:
* Adhere to the existing style as much as possible; notably, 2 space indents and long-form keywords.
* Keep the history clean! squash your branches before you submit a pull request. `pull --rebase` is your friend.
* Any changes to the core should be tested against Vim 7.2.
* In the majority of cases, modifications to colors of existing themes will likely be rejected. Themes are a subjective thing, so while you may prefer that a particular color be darker, another user will prefer it to be lighter, or something entirely different. The more popular the theme, the more unlikely the change will be accepted. However, it's pretty simple to create your own theme; copy the theme to `~/.vim/autoload/airline/themes` under a new name with your modifications, and it can be used.
