Glaive is a utility for configuring maktaba plugins. It turns this:

let g:myplugin_enablefeature = 1
let g:myplugin_defaultdir = $HOME
let g:myplugin_weirdmode = 'm'

into this:

Glaive myplugin enablefeature defaultdir=`$HOME` weirdmode='m'

In order for this to work, the plugin must use the maktaba flag API. Any plugin using the flag API can be configured by glaive.

Maktaba is a vimscript library for plugin authors. It handles parsing the setting syntax, looking up the plugins, and applying the settings. Glaive itself is merely a thin wrapper around the hooks that maktaba provides: any plugin can support a similar interface with minimal effort. Plugin manager plugins in particular are encouraged to do so.

For details, see the executable documentation in the vroom/ directory or the helpfiles in the doc/ directory. The helpfiles are also available via :help glaive if Glaive is installed (and helptags have been generated).

This example uses Vundle.vim, whose plugin-adding command is Plugin. Note that Vundle does not add plugins to the runtime path until vundle#end(), so Glaive commands must come after this function call.

We will use two plugins for demonstration:

• helloworld, which is an example plugin that comes with maktaba.
• vim-codefmt which is a real-world plugin used for autoformatting code.

set rtp+=~/.vim/bundle/Vundle.vim
call vundle#begin()
...
" Add maktaba, glaive, and codefmt to the runtimepath.
" (Glaive must also be installed before it can be used.)
Plugin 'google/vim-maktaba'
Plugin 'google/vim-glaive'
Plugin 'google/vim-codefmt'
...
vundle#end()
filetype plugin indent on
" Add helloworld to the runtime path. (Normally this would be done with another
" Plugin command, but helloworld doesn't have a repository of its own.)
call maktaba#plugin#Install(maktaba#path#Join([maktaba#Maktaba().location,
    \ 'examples', 'helloworld']))
call glaive#Install()
" Configure helloworld using glaive.
Glaive helloworld plugin[mappings] name='Bram'
" Real world example: configure vim-codefmt
Glaive codefmt google_java_executable='java -jar /path/to/google-java-format.jar'

Now, <Leader>Hh should say Hello, Bram!, and <Leader>Hg should say Goodbye, Bram!. (Recall that <Leader> defaults to \.)