Actually, I found vundle (https://github.com/gmarik/vundle) to be slightly easier to use.

That's interesting, but it's a very different approach to Pathogen, and it's very much a matter of taste IMHO. I prefer to use git submodules directly or through a general-purpose scripting language and just have the vim component load my plugins.

Exactly. I use homesick to version and sync all the config files in my home directory across machines (linux and OSX alike), and git submodules already solve the problem for me.

My .vim folder would be a gigantic mess without Pathogen. I recommend using Tammer Saleh's update_bundles script ( http://tammersaleh.com/posts/the-modern-vim-config-with-path... ) to keep your vim plugins up to date.

I hadn't seen that one before so I came up with a similar script that updates both git and mercurial repositories: https://bitbucket.org/tednaleid/vimrc/src/tip/install.sh

Tammer's has some nice things in it that I might crib, thanks for the link

The author switched to Emacs. https://twitter.com/#!/justinlilly/status/96630245226061824

But yeah, as a vim user I agree. Pathogen helps a lot.