Fail to install vim solarized

Question

I am struggling on the installation of solarized plugin on vim, the following are the steps I followed

1. Use gmarik/Vundle.vim to install the solarized plugin (with the below .vimrc script)
2. Run vim +PluginInstall +qall to install the plugin
3. Put the following lines in the .vimrc:

syntax enable
set background=dark
colorscheme solarized

.vimrc script used

But outcome the solarized plugin comes with following results which look and feel are not as expected

Expecting look

Is there anything I have done wrong? Please advice. Thanks and appreciate everyone for the kind help

Try to add

set t_Co=256 let g:solarized_termcolors=256

Looks better, but still different from the capture shown by the author

Answer 1

I had the same problem once. I guess the easiest way to do this is using pathogen. To install pathogen, from console:

    mkdir -p ~/.vim/autoload ~/.vim/bundle; \
curl -LSso ~/.vim/autoload/pathogen.vim \
    https://raw.github.com/tpope/vim-pathogen/master/autoload/pathogen.vim

Then add this to your .vimrc:

execute pathogen#infect()

Now you can install plugins into ~/.vim/bundle which will be automatically loaded to vim. To install solarized theme, simply add vim-colors-solarized plugin:

cd ~/.vim/bundle
git clone git://github.com/altercation/vim-colors-solarized.git

The rest you have, which is setting t_Co to 256 and setting colorscheme to solarized. You may also try:

set t_Co = 256

Finally changing terminal emulator's color scheme to solarized might help. Or if you don't want to do this, add this line in .vimrc before setting your colorscheme to solarized:

let g:solarized_termcolors=256 

I hope it helps :)

Answer 2

I used vim-plug to add solarize. In .vimrc I added...

if empty(glob('~/.vim/autoload/plug.vim'))   silent !curl -fLo ~/.vim/autoload/plug.vim --create-dirs
        \ https://raw.githubusercontent.com/junegunn/vim-plug/master/plug.vim   autocmd VimEnter * PlugInstall --sync | source $MYVIMRC endif call 
plug#begin('~/.vim/plugged')

Plug 'altercation/vim-colors-solarized'

call plug#end()

set background=dark

colorscheme solarized

Then after saving and closing, I run this to install

vim +'PlugInstall --sync' +qa

Answer 3

I had the same problem. I never managed to get vim-colors-solarized working but instead the solarized8 plugin worked perfectly for me. I guess the question is no longer relevant after 6 years, but here's my solarized setup.

I have iTerm2 with its solarized dark color theme. My term is set to xterm-256color, I have vim-plug on top of neovim, my init.vim plugin for solarized8 looks like: Plug 'lifepillar/vim-solarized8'

Then I have these lines that set up proper colors:

set termguicolors
let &t_8f = "\<Esc>[38;2;%lu;%lu;%lum"
let &t_8b = "\<Esc>[48;2;%lu;%lu;%lum"

set background=dark
colorscheme solarized8
syntax enable

I also have the vim-sensible plugin but I'm not entirely sure if that has any effect for this.

Good luck to anyone who's also trying to get solarized dark working in vim.