Latest neovim on raspberry pi

Installing neovim on a Raspberry Pi using apt typically results in an outdated version like 0.7.2. However, many modern setups like lazyvim require neovim >=0.9, making it essential to update.

This guide walks you through building and installing the latest version directly from the source.

Build & Install

ssh <your-raspberry>
 
sudo apt install git cmake
 
cd ~/dev # or whereever you want
git clone https://github.com/neovim/neovim.git
cd neovim
# For more see https://github.com/neovim/neovim/blob/master/BUILD.md
make CMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=RELEASE
 
# After a successful build, create a .deb package to install on your system.
cd build
cpack -G DEB
 
# Either
sudo dpkg -i nvim-linux64.deb
 
# or if you have neovim installed already
sudo apt remove neovim
sudo dpkg -i --force-overwrite nvim-linux64.deb

Verify installation

$ nvim --version
NVIM v0.11.0-dev-862+gdf915f3af
Build type: Release
LuaJIT 2.1.1724512491
Run "nvim -V1 -v" for more info

You are done!

Additional

Make sure you also have the following tools installed:

sudo apt install fd-find ripgrep python3-pip