The One Plugin Manager

What?

Summarize the plugin you'd like to see exist. In a few sentences, what's your idea?

I want vim-plug but in lua. The syntax should be horrifyingly obvious, the code should be simple, it should run instantly, use the modern bells and whistles that were recently bestowed upon us (but only the bits it needs), and it should gently encourage the user to organize things in a simple and effective manner. Most importantly, it should be the Obvious Answer™ to the question “what do I use to manage my plugins?”, with a name like plugins.nvim.

Why?

What should this plugin provide? What problems does it solve?

In the good/bad old days, you were happy to use Pathogen on Vim. Then maybe you moved to Vim-Plug and used that for a while. Maybe you used Dein or something else. Maybe not. Now Vim comes with “out of the box” package management, and there are five thousand different plugin (package? what’s the difference? what’s in a name?) managers from which to choose from with no Obvious Answer™.

I don’t want to think about my plugin manager. Do you? Do neovim newcomers?

Potential existing implementations:

Are there any existing plugins (Lua, Vimscript, or remote) that come close to your idea?

Too many – that’s the problem. There are the old kids on the block like https://github.com/junegunn/vim-plug, then a gazillion other written in every possible language you can think of. There are some more recent that use the (relatively) new package capabilities like https://github.com/k-takata/minpac or https://github.com/kristijanhusak/vim-packager.

Closest to what I have in mind is probably https://github.com/wbthomason/packer.nvim. Maybe. I don’t know. To know I’d have to think about plugin managers, which is what I’m trying to avoid in the first place.

Potential pitfalls:

Are there any challenges you're aware of to making the plugin you're proposing?

There may not be an Obvious Answer™ because people want fundamentally different things. That’s a cowardly excuse.