When comparing vim-plug vs AsyncRun.vim, the Slant community recommends vim-plug for most people. In the question“What are the best plugin managers for vim?” vim-plug is ranked 1st while AsyncRun.vim is ranked 8th. The most important reason people chose vim-plug is:
Vim-plug just requires a single file download to start using, and also requires nothing extra be added to your Vimrc outside of the function calls to start/end defining plugins.
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Pros
Pro Simple to set up and use
Vim-plug just requires a single file download to start using, and also requires nothing extra be added to your Vimrc outside of the function calls to start/end defining plugins.
Pro Lightweight
Vim-plug uses a fast parallel installation/update process and uses on demand loading for faster startup times.
Pro Parallel plugin installation
Pro Recently updated
Active Repo
Pro Fast
Pro Supports post-update hooks
vim-plug allows you to automatically run arbitrary shell commands after installing or updating a plugin, which is useful if the plugin needs to be compiled or make install
ed after an update.
Pro Good user experience
Output is displayed in the quick fix window, errors are matched with error format. After a job is finished, it can ring a bell to notify you while you're focusing on editing.
Pro Fully asynchronous
Command is done in the background, no need to wait for the entire process to finish. You can explore the error output immediately, or keep working in vim while executing.
Pro Easy to use
Just start your background command by :AsyncRun (just like old "!" cmd). Easy to distribute, just a single self-contained asyncrun.vim source file.