kickstart.nvim VS mason.nvim

Compare kickstart.nvim vs mason.nvim and see what are their differences.

kickstart.nvim

A launch point for your personal nvim configuration (by nvim-lua)

mason.nvim

Portable package manager for Neovim that runs everywhere Neovim runs. Easily install and manage LSP servers, DAP servers, linters, and formatters. (by williamboman)
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kickstart.nvim mason.nvim
285 108
14,904 6,777
23.9% -
9.1 8.2
1 day ago 13 days ago
Lua Lua
MIT License Apache License 2.0
The number of mentions indicates the total number of mentions that we've tracked plus the number of user suggested alternatives.
Stars - the number of stars that a project has on GitHub. Growth - month over month growth in stars.
Activity is a relative number indicating how actively a project is being developed. Recent commits have higher weight than older ones.
For example, an activity of 9.0 indicates that a project is amongst the top 10% of the most actively developed projects that we are tracking.

kickstart.nvim

Posts with mentions or reviews of kickstart.nvim. We have used some of these posts to build our list of alternatives and similar projects. The last one was on 2024-04-05.
  • From JetBrains to VSCode to NVIM: Why I Made the Switch
    1 project | dev.to | 28 Apr 2024
    Out of the box it offers almost nothing, but after 7 years of development I like that. I love the idea of customizing to my needs my IDE, so with the help of kickstart.nvim I have with 1 minute of installing and 10 extra minutes of configuration a complete IDE.
  • Using a venv with Neovim's Python LSP
    2 projects | dev.to | 5 Apr 2024
    I recently started coding with Neovim using kickstart.nvim as the template for my editor configuration. I downloaded the python-lsp-server package using Mason, but I was disappointed to discover that the IntelliSense on my third party dependencies didn't work. The LSP was resolving to my global Python installation, which did not have the packages from my virtual environment (venv) installed.
  • I Learned Neovim In A Weekend
    1 project | dev.to | 11 Mar 2024
    First thing I did was get kickstart.nvim. I had heard it was extremely useful (and it was). It was very easy to install. I start reading through init.lua, and it told me to run :Tutor, which is almost 1,000 lines of learning how to use Neovim, to which I obviously ran that command and started reading. Obviously, it takes a bit of time to complete :Tutor, but it's well worth it. "hjkl" wasn't too hard to get used to, also repeating motions by using numbers was useful, such as using '5dd' to delete 5 lines. I highly suggest reading this file, especially since I didn't really know about the different modes, which is probably why I failed to switch the other times. You would start writing your code, then Neovim would say that it can't find that command, you would accidently type an i and then start typing, and so on, it was a nightmare. For those that don't know the modes, here is each mode and how to get between them.
  • Kickstart.nvim: Single file launch point for a personal nvim config
    1 project | news.ycombinator.com | 7 Mar 2024
  • Neovide – a simple, no-nonsense, cross-platform GUI for Neovim
    17 projects | news.ycombinator.com | 31 Jan 2024
    I also suggest against using distributions. Instead of learning how to configure nvim itself you're learning to configure that specific distro.

    I suggest to take someone's lua config and start from there. Kickstart.nvim is a good one: https://github.com/nvim-lua/kickstart.nvim

  • It’s been an hour and I have made no progress
    2 projects | /r/neovim | 9 Dec 2023
  • Do I need NeoVIM?
    11 projects | /r/neovim | 7 Dec 2023
    1) the option I wouldn’t chose, use Kickstarter. It’s a minimal starter config, using a single init.lua that helps you build a config slowly. https://github.com/nvim-lua/kickstart.nvim
  • ready to use neovim for web development (frontend) - beginners
    4 projects | /r/neovim | 5 Dec 2023
    I highly recommend Lazyvim for if you want to have a VSCode (ish) like experience that still exposes you to configuring in Lua. Or Kickstart.nvim if you want a more "from scratch" experience
  • Search commands slow in neovim but fast in vim
    2 projects | /r/neovim | 2 Dec 2023
    In case it is helpful, I am using kickstart.nvim with only minor modifications.
  • Kickstart.emacs Starter kit for Gnu Emacs
    2 projects | /r/emacs | 13 Nov 2023
    One of the project goals is to become something like kickstart.nvim. Or, to be a reference if someone doesn't know how to do something.

mason.nvim

Posts with mentions or reviews of mason.nvim. We have used some of these posts to build our list of alternatives and similar projects. The last one was on 2024-04-21.
  • I can't stand using VSCode so I wrote my own (it wasn't easy)
    10 projects | news.ycombinator.com | 21 Apr 2024
  • Using a venv with Neovim's Python LSP
    2 projects | dev.to | 5 Apr 2024
    I recently started coding with Neovim using kickstart.nvim as the template for my editor configuration. I downloaded the python-lsp-server package using Mason, but I was disappointed to discover that the IntelliSense on my third party dependencies didn't work. The LSP was resolving to my global Python installation, which did not have the packages from my virtual environment (venv) installed.
  • Do I need NeoVIM?
    11 projects | /r/neovim | 7 Dec 2023
    https://github.com/hrsh7th/nvim-cmp This is an autocompletion engine https://github.com/nvim-treesitter/nvim-treesitter This allows NeoVim to install parsing scripts so NeoVim can do things like code highlighting. https://github.com/williamboman/mason.nvim Not strictly necessary, but allows you to access a repo of LSP, install them, and configure them for without you actively messing about in config files. https://github.com/neovim/nvim-lspconfig Also not strictly necessary, but vastly simplifies LSP setup. https://github.com/williamboman/mason-lspconfig.nvim This lets the above two plugins talk to each other more easily.
  • Do I need a plugin manager ?
    3 projects | /r/neovim | 7 Dec 2023
    I'm using mason.nvim to install my dependencies, I've this snippet at nvim/plugin/mason.lua so after cloning my dotfiles I can just run:
  • Mason can't install gopls (or gofumpt, or goimports)
    2 projects | /r/neovim | 6 Dec 2023
    The suggestion from this thread fixed it for me. I just needed to unset GOOS and GOARCH then restart neovim.
  • Neovim documentation is pretty bad
    1 project | /r/neovim | 18 Jul 2023
    For instance, I'm trying to install rust-analyzer in lazyvim from https://github.com/williamboman/mason.nvim. The installation instructions are:
  • LazyVim
    32 projects | news.ycombinator.com | 16 Jul 2023
  • How do you enable semantic highlighting for Python?
    4 projects | /r/neovim | 7 Jul 2023
    I have pyright installed via mason which apparently support "semantic token highlighting" but have been having a hard time getting these colors to show up in a buffer. It seems Neovim has changed how it handles semantic highlighting a few times so there's still some conflicting information online. It's hard to know what's current and what's not. Any help would be greatly appreciated.
  • language server not installed or missing from path
    1 project | /r/neovim | 5 Jul 2023
    Use mason to install the language servers you want.
  • Why is nobody using CoC anymore?
    3 projects | /r/neovim | 3 Jul 2023
    Because null-ls.nvim & mason.nvim together do everything I wanted CoC for

What are some alternatives?

When comparing kickstart.nvim and mason.nvim you can also consider the following projects:

NvChad - Blazing fast Neovim config providing solid defaults and a beautiful UI, enhancing your neovim experience.

lazy-lsp.nvim - Neovim plugin to auto install LSP servers

nvim-lua-guide - A guide to using Lua in Neovim

coc.nvim - Nodejs extension host for vim & neovim, load extensions like VSCode and host language servers.

LazyVim - Neovim config for the lazy

null-ls.nvim - Use Neovim as a language server to inject LSP diagnostics, code actions, and more via Lua.

lazy.nvim - 💤 A modern plugin manager for Neovim

omnisharp-vim - Vim omnicompletion (intellisense) and more for C#

KotlinLanguageServer - Kotlin code completion, diagnostics and more for any editor/IDE using the Language Server Protocol

formatter.nvim

Neovim-from-scratch - 📚 A Neovim config designed from scratch to be understandable

neoformat - :sparkles: A (Neo)vim plugin for formatting code.