Copying files with Vim's netrw on Mac OS X is broken

Question

To copy a file in Vim using netrw has the following steps:

1. Select the destination directory (using mt)
2. Select the file to be copied (using mf)
3. Proceed with copying (using mc)

The commands to use in netrw are:

mt run while cursor is on top of the directory intended to be the destination
mf run while cursor is on top of the file intended to be copied
mc run while cursor is on top of the destination ("marked target") directory

If I do this on an example project, Vim will display something like:

Copy foo.md to : bar.md

Suggesting it's about to do what I want it to, but upon confirming this I get the following error:

1 **error** (netrw) tried using g:netrw_localcopycmd<cp>; it doesn't work!

I've read online that netrw is considered pretty buggy and so there doesn't appear to be much documentation or notes on how to resolve this issue.

I should be clear and state that I'm not interested in using NERDTree.

Answer 1

read more at :help netrw-c to understand more about current directory and browsing directory mismatch.

you either want to press c before the process or just let g:netrw_keepdir=0 in your .vimrc