How do I install a plugin for vim?

Question

Make sure that the actual .vim file is in ~/.vim/plugin/

Those two commands will create a ~/.vim/vim-haml/ directory with the ftplugin, syntax, etc directories in it. Those directories need to be immediately in the ~/.vim directory proper or ~/.vim/vim-haml needs to be added to the list of paths that vim searches for plugins.

Edit:

I recently decided to tweak my vim config and in the process wound up writing the following rakefile. It only works on Mac/Linux, but the advantage over cp versions is that it's completely safe (symlinks don't overwrite existing files, uninstall only deletes symlinks) and easy to keep things updated.

# Easily install vim plugins from a source control checkout (e.g. Github)
#
# alias vim-install=rake -f ~/.vim/rakefile-vim-install
# vim-install
# vim-install uninstall

require 'ftools'
require 'fileutils'

task :default => :install
desc "Install a vim plugin the lazy way"
task :install do
  vim_dir      = File.expand_path("~/.vim")
  plugin_dir   = Dir.pwd

  if not (FileTest.exists? File.join(plugin_dir,".git") or
          FileTest.exists? File.join(plugin_dir,".svn") or
          FileTest.exists? File.join(plugin_dir,".hg"))
      puts "#{plugin_dir} isn't a source controlled directory. Aborting."
      exit 1
  end

  Dir['**/'].each do |d|
    FileUtils.mkdir_p File.join(vim_dir, d)
  end

  Dir["**/*.{txt,snippet,snippets,vim,js,wsf}"].each do |f|
    ln File.join(plugin_dir, f), File.join(vim_dir,f)
  end

  boldred = "\033[1;31m"
  clear = "\033[0m"
  puts "\nDone. Remember to #{boldred}:helptags ~/.vim/doc#{clear}"
end

task :uninstall do
  vim_dir      = File.expand_path("~/.vim")
  plugin_dir   = Dir.pwd
  Dir["**/*.{txt,snippet,snippets,vim}"].each do |f|
    safe_rm File.join(vim_dir, f)
  end
end

def nicename(path)
    boldgreen = "\033[1;32m"
    clear = "\033[0m"
    return "#{boldgreen}#{File.join(path.split('/')[-2..-1])}#{clear}\t"
end

def ln(src, dst)
    begin
        FileUtils.ln_s src, dst
        puts "    Symlink #{nicename src}\t => #{nicename dst}"
    rescue Errno::EEXIST
        puts "  #{nicename dst} exists! Skipping."
    end
end

def cp(src, dst)
  puts "    Copying #{nicename src}\t=> #{nicename dst}"
  FileUtils.cp src, dst
end

def safe_rm(target)
    if FileTest.exists? target and FileTest.symlink? target
        puts "    #{nicename target} removed."
        File.delete target
    else
        puts "  #{nicename target} is not a symlink. Skipping"
    end
end

To expand on Karl's reply, Vim looks in a specific set of directories for its runtime files. You can see that set of directories via :set runtimepath?. In order to tell Vim to also look inside ~/.vim/vim-haml you'll want to add

set runtimepath+=$HOME/.vim/vim-haml

to your ~/.vimrc. You'll likely also want the following in your ~/.vimrc to enable all the functionality provided by vim-haml.

filetype plugin indent on
syntax on

You can refer to the 'runtimepath' and :filetype help topics in Vim for more information.

I think you should have a look at the Pathogen plugin. After you have this installed, you can keep all of your plugins in separate folders in ~/.vim/bundle/, and Pathogen will take care of loading them.

Or, alternatively, perhaps you would prefer Vundle, which provides similar functionality (with the added bonus of automatic updates from plugins in github).

Update (as 2019):

cd ~/.vim
git clone git://github.com/tpope/vim-haml.git pack/bundle/start/haml

Explanation (from :h pack ad :h packages):

1. All the directories found are added to runtimepath. They must be in ~/.vim/pack/whatever/start [you can only change whatever].
2. the plugins found in the plugins dir in runtimepath are sourced.

So this load the plugin on start (hence the name start).

You can also get optional plugin (loaded with :packadd) if you put them in ~/.vim/pack/bundle/opt