General

First of all let's start with basics. Pick your favorite plugin manager: Pathogen, Vundle, Dein or vim-plug, just to name a few. Pathogen is the oldest, simplest, and most featureless. Vundle is very popular and I've used it for a long time before. If you're using some of Shougo's plugins, you should probably pick Dein. Last but not least is vim-plug, which I've recently switched to.

• Pathogen

  • git clone https://github.com/morhetz/gruvbox.git ~/.vim/bundle/gruvbox

• Vundle

  • Add Plugin 'morhetz/gruvbox' to your .vimrc and run :PluginInstall

• Dein

  • Add the following to your .vimrc, and run call dein#install():

  call dein#add('morhetz/gruvbox')
  

• vim-plug

  • Add Plug 'morhetz/gruvbox' to your .vimrc and run :PlugInstall

• Vim-8

  • git clone https://github.com/morhetz/gruvbox.git ~/.vim/pack/default/start/gruvbox

• VIM - Vi IMproved 8.x MS-Windows 64-bit console version

  • git clone https://github.com/morhetz/gruvbox.git "~\vimfiles\pack\default\start\gruvbox"

Then add the line autocmd vimenter * ++nested colorscheme gruvbox to your .vimrc file, and restart vim. If you are using a plugin manager like Vundle, make sure this setting is after the plugin initialization section. [the reason we are using autocmd is that, vim always read .vimrc file first and after that starts to load plugins, so in this case, we use autocmd vimenter, to be sure that all plugins are loaded completely and then use gruvbox]

If you're using Packer, you can just put a single line

use {'morhetz/gruvbox', config = function() vim.cmd.colorscheme("gruvbox") end }

If you're using GUI version of vim that should be enough. Otherwise let me guide you through the hell of terminal specific issues.

Refer Usage page on dark and light themes switching and cursor inversions.

Arch Linux / Manjaro Linux

The vim and vim-airline gruvbox color schemes are available from the AUR as vim-gruvbox-git and vim-airline-gruvbox-git, respectively.