Switching a LazyNvim Plugin to a Fork

June 7, 2026

• NeoVim

Background

The original nvim-treesitter/nvim-treesitter was archived April 3 2026. The community fork neovim-treesitter/nvim-treesitter is a true Git continuation (shares full commit history up to the archival point) and is the recommended replacement.

What changed in the fork

• New required dependency: neovim-treesitter/treesitter-parser-registry. It provides require('treesitter-registry'), used internally for parser discovery — must be listed in dependencies.

• No ensure_installed in setup(): the fork’s setup() only accepts install_dir; ensure_installed is silently ignored by the plugin itself

• NvChad compatibility: NvChad’s TSInstallAll command reads opts.ensure_installed directly from the lazy.nvim spec (not from the plugin’s own setup), then calls require("nvim-treesitter").install(list). That API still exists in the fork, so NvChad integration works unchanged.

How to switch in lazy.nvim

Change the plugin name string and add the registry dependency everywhere the plugin is referenced:

-- lua/plugins/init.lua
{
  "neovim-treesitter/nvim-treesitter",           -- was nvim-treesitter/nvim-treesitter
  dependencies = { "neovim-treesitter/treesitter-parser-registry" },
...
}

-- lua/plugins/telescope.lua (or any file with nvim-treesitter as a dep)
{
"nvim-telescope/telescope.nvim",
dependencies = { "neovim-treesitter/nvim-treesitter" },  -- update here too
...
}

After saving, close Neovim, delete the old clone, and reopen:

rm -rf ~/.local/share/nvim/lazy/nvim-treesitter
# reopen nvim — lazy.nvim auto-installs from the fork

The lazy.nvim “last fragment wins” gotcha

lazy.nvim resolves a plugin’s source URL by iterating all spec fragments for that plugin in processing order and taking the last non-nil url (plugin.url = fragment.url or plugin.url). Plugin files within an import are processed alphabetically.

Consequence: if telescope.lua (t) contains dependencies = { "nvim-treesitter/nvim-treesitter" } and init.lua (i) contains "neovim-treesitter/nvim-treesitter", the telescope dependency is processed last and silently wins — reverting the URL back to the original repo.

Rule: when switching a plugin’s source URL via the name string, update every occurrence of the old name across all spec files, including dependencies lists in unrelated plugin specs.