Usage¶

Application-specific requirements¶

Vim plugin requirements¶

The vim plugin requires a vim version with Python support compiled in. Presence of Python support in Vim can be checked by running vim --version | grep +python.

If Python support is absent then Vim needs to be compiled with it. To do this use --enable-pythoninterp ./configure flag (Python 3 uses --enable-python3interp flag instead). Note that this also requires the related Python headers to be installed. Please consult distribution’s documentation for details on how to compile and install packages.

Vim version 7.4 or newer is recommended for performance reasons, but Powerline supports Vim 7.0.112 and higher.

Shell prompts requirements¶

Due to fish having incorrect code for prompt width calculations up to version 2.1 and no way to tell that certain sequence of characters has no width (%{…%} in zsh and \[…\] in bash prompts serve exactly this purpose) users that have fish versions below 2.1 are not supported..

WM widgets requirements¶

Awesome is supported starting from version 3.5.1, inclusive. QTile is supported from version 0.6, inclusive.

Terminal emulator requirements¶

Powerline uses several special glyphs to get the arrow effect and some custom symbols for developers. This requires either a symbol font or a patched font installed. Used terminal emulator must also support either patched fonts or fontconfig for Powerline to work properly.

24-bit color support can also be enabled if terminal emulator supports it.

Application/terminal emulator feature support matrix¶
Name	OS	Patched font support	24-bit color support
Gvim	Linux
iTerm2	OS X
Konsole	Linux
lxterminal	Linux
MacVim	OS X
rxvt-unicode	Linux	[1]
st	Linux		[2]
Terminal.app	OS X
libvte-based [3]	Linux		[4]
xterm	Linux		[5]
fbterm	Linux