How do I install a plugin for vim?

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.

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