How to get add folder to Projects (like Sublime Text) in VIM? - vim

I just switched from Sublime Text to GVIM (on Windows). I am still debating whether I should continue ST or move completely to VIM. One feature that I desperately need (or miss) are
Ctrl+P to go to any file that I want in my list of folders.
Ctrl+Shift+f to find (and replace) any text in those list of folders.
I had added number of folders using Add Folders to Project feature in Sublime Text 3. It was really helpful. Now, I know that CtrlP plugin for VIM can do similar thing, but I can't figure out how to make it search the folders that I want, and not the root directory of current file.
I played around a bit with setting path in my vimrc file without much success.
Can you please help. If it is a repeated question, please excuse me.
Thanks.

AFAIK, ctrlp plugin only searches within one directory (and its descendants). Use the Unix features: make a directory with links to out-of-project directories you are interested in. This way, the association with out-of-project directories is not just something the editor knows about, but something recorded in the actual project.
Search and replace is a bit stickier thing. You want to work with all the files you are interested in, then repeat the replace command through all of them. For example, if you want to do the search for foo and replace with bar on all C files here and under,
:args **/*.c
:argdo %s/foo/bar/g

Ctrl+P to go to any file that I want in my list of folders.
The :find command can be used to "find" a file in the directories specified in the 'path' option:
set path+=/some/arbitrary/path
set path+=/another/one
:find *foo
I find these two mappings very handy:
nnoremap <key> :find * " search in every directory
" in 'path'
nnoremap <key> :find <C-R>=expand('%:p:h').'/**/*'<CR> " start from the directory
" of the current file
Ctrl+Shift+f to find (and replace) any text in those list of folders.
What amadan said above.

Good switch! So you’ve discovered CtrlP. It has extensive documentation built in. Use :h ctrlp to see the full vimdocs explaining the various options. It’ll explain some important settings for working dirs, which are pretty important for a good experience with it. Take for example some of the settings I use:
" The one you really care about...
" Set root to CWD. Another good option is 'r' for VCS mode.
" You should start vim in the root of your project tree
let g:ctrlp_working_path_mode = 0
" You _can_ switch dirs
let g:ctrlp_extensions = ['dir']
" Avoid big/unimportant project areas
set wildignore+=*/node_modules/*,*/build/*,*/components/*,*/_public/*,*/tmp/*,*/vendor/*
" Cache -- get used to pressing F5 on tree changes/additions
let g:ctrlp_use_caching = 1
let g:ctrlp_clear_cache_on_exit = 0
" Somewhat self-explanatory
let g:ctrlp_show_hidden = 1
let g:ctrlp_switch_buffer = 2
let g:ctrlp_max_depth = 6
let g:ctrlp_max_height = 50
" Open *h*orizontally and *j*ump to first win.
let g:ctrlp_open_multiple_files = 'hj'
" Use <C-d> to toggle
"let g:ctrlp_by_filename = 1
For further control of where to look for files outside your working tree, consult g:ctrlp_user_command. There is a Windows example using dir. You’d use that, but with your desired extra paths.
You might also want to add NerdTree, a nice complement to CtrlP. It is reminiscent of ST’s sidebar. Use its ? to get help. It has a menu that lets you quickly add files and dirs, maybe like you’re wanting out of “Add folders to project”.
For search-and-replace, look at ag.vim. I map it to <leader>g (meaning “grep”).
Those mentioned are some of my favorites, but you should explore the world of Vim plugins to decide which others are worth adopting. I recommend trying one at a time while you’re new, rather than a sometimes-opaque “distribution”. Tools to make plugin management easier are Vundle / Pathogen (choose one).

Eureka...!!!!!
After searching tirelessly for days (and sleepless nights), I found my answer (please read on).
First some foolosophy though
I was so keen not to give up on Vim. But this issue was just eating me from inside, and was disruptive in my work flow. I have many project folders in windows that I want vim to search through. Ctrl+p for some reason never really worked. I had some not-so-nice thoughts of giving up on Vim. and then I found this!
My Answer
This is a little different from what I expected. But the answer is Everything (by VoidTools). It allows to search from anywhere and gives results in a fraction of sec. It is by far the best filename search tool in Windows. It supports Regex. (though it is not text search tool). It has a command line interface called
es.exe
using Vim's FindEverything.vim plugin (FindEverything), I was able to search not only through my project folders, but pretty much anywhere. It returns the results in the vim buffer.
Thanks Y'all for your help. I know that not everyone may agree with this solution. But on Windows, this is by far the best solution, I found! Hopefully, it is useful for others why are in same boat!!!

Related

goto-file (gf) prioritize directory instead of filename

I'm trying to configure gf to open files under the cursor.
It works always... almost.
I found an issue when the text under the cursor has unfortunately a corresponding directory. In that case, netrw plugin is opened.
Let me give you an example. I am in this code:
[...], MyObject myobject, [...]
I am over MyObject and press gf.
Unfortunately I have in a folder:
myobject <-- a directory
MyObject.java <-- the file to open
netrw is activated.
I tried to check doc to tinker a little bit (suffixesadd, ...), but probably I am missing how to do it properly.
I found this answer, but it is a little bit different in my opinion because in that case the match of the text and the directory were the only 1st one and it was perfect.
Any help?
P.S. what I am trying to do is creating a small vim plugin that could be used to navigate Java projects based on Maven (it's called vim-java-maven).
Just for learning VIM.
As silly as it may sound, Vim considers directories as valid targets so…
:help 'suffixesadd' doesn't help because the directory name is an exact match,
:help 'includeexpr', which is only invoked if there is no match, is not invoked since there is a match.
That behaviour is hardcoded and there is no way to affect it at runtime. The only solution is to write your own Gf() that handles directories more sensibly and map it to gf.

vim: multiple "sessions" in the same instance?

I work on a growing project with vim. I like to have most of the project files open in the same session. However, as the project's growing, I start to have too many files open at the same time; switching between files [*] starts getting a bit unproductive at 40+ files because the list gets too long (for, say, 20 files this way of navigating works very well for me, however).
Is there a way to split the session in multiple "sub-sessions" in the same instance of vim?
How I imagine it is that each session would contain, say, 20 files and only list those with :ls, and that I could switch between them in the same vim window (basicallly the same as if I'd run multiple instances of vim in the same shell and switch between them with Ctrl-Z; fg %X, just without leaving vim).
[*] I like to navigate between files with :ls followed by :bX (or directly :bX in case I've memorized a buffer number), along with :bp/:bn, and I always have at least two split open, and this workflow works quite well for me, so I'm not looking for more efficient alternatives to :ls.
I never use :ls. However I often work on big projects, and I open (many) files from different projects (and I'm still able to compile what I want in the mode I want (debug, release, ...), generate tags independently for each project, have different coding styles, etc)
Your question seems to be about "How do I go from one file to another". I have many split windows opened simultaneously and I jump from one to the other with:
:sb, which supports tab completion on filenames (already opened in buffer)
:sp **/filename*<tab> (When it's not already opened)
an old plugin of mine -- others usually use Unite, command-T or other similar plugins -- to merge :sp and :sb into one command.
Tags. The default integration of tags (/csope) is already nice. Yet, I've developed lh-tags, in order to simply the tags navigation in a world of overloaded and overridden functions as it's the case in C++.
EDIT: I've just pushed a highly experimental :Project <name> :ls feature in lh-vim-lib. Note: this new project feature wasn't meant to do what you're looking for, but it's easy to have a restricted :ls thanks to it.
To use it, you'll have to first register buffers to one project or another. Here, I recommend plugins like local_vimrc if each project can be distinguished as files under a given directory. For each root directory place a _vimrc_local.vim file in it that'll contain:
:let s:k_version = 1
" Global definitions executed everytime we enter a file belonging to the project
" This is where we set g:lobal_variables and options for project-unaware plugins.
....
" Then the anti-reinclusion guards for buffer definitions
if &cp || (exists("b:loaded__my_foobar_project_settings")
\ && (b:loaded__my_foobar_project_settings > s:k_version)
\ && !exists('g:force_reload__my_foobar_project_settings'))
finish
endif
let b:loaded__my_foobar_project_settings = s:k_version
let s:cpo_save=&cpo
set cpo&vim
" HERE, we say the current buffer belongs to a project
" solution 1 when we need more control
:call lh#project#define(s:, {'name': 'YouProjectName'})
" OR solution 2 which is easier to manipulate (tab completion, ...)
:Project --define YourProjectName
You can also have a smaller granularity if you wish (this is something which is still poorly documented).
Then, you'll be able to consult the list of projects with :Project --list, or to consult the buffers associated to a given project with :Project YouProjectName :ls.

Making AutoComplPop search entire project (or open buffers)?

I started using AutoComplPop for automatic code completions. It works great on the single file I am editing, but if file1 is making a reference to a method defined in file2, it doesn't find it.
The docs don't specify if there is a way to make it search a whole project directory, or even just all open buffers, so I can't tell if this is simply not something the plugin does, or if I need to enable something.
I was testing it out on two Ruby files, if that's relevant. Thanks!
Looks like that the cause of the problem is that ACP set the complete option for its purposes to .,w,b,k (see line #125 in autocomplpop/plugin/acp.vim),
call l9#defineVariableDefault('g:acp_completeOption', '.,w,b,k')
while the default value that is used when pressing \<C-n> is .,w,b,u,t,i. And it appears that the very last letter i actually makes the difference: for some reason vim would not use word from an include file opened in a buffer to complete words in another buffer. So, b option is not enough, i must also be included. Adding the following line into my .vimrc helped
let g:acp_completeOption = '.,w,b,u,t,i'
At least it worked for C++ files, but I'm not sure it fixes the problem for the case of Ruby scripts.
Depending on what is on the left of the cursor, ACP (like all the alternatives) decides what completion mechanism to use.
But ACP only uses Vim's default completion mechanisms: if <C-x><C-o> and <C-n>/<C-p> don't provide what you are looking for, ACP won't help. Try them out first.
Oh cool, this plugin looks a lot like neocomplcache but maybe cleaner...looks a little old. Little concerning that there are so many open tickets on that project and no updates in two years.
Anyway, according to the documentation it doesn't...really...say. Very likely its one of the following things:
Your pwd. If the root directory for your source is some/path then that should also be your current working directory. Try typing :cd some/path to see if that makes a difference.
The runtime path rtp. See if adding the directory with your source files to &rtp does the trick.
The path. Same deal as the &rtp setting.
Very likely this plugin is just falling back on the built in ruby omni completion functions bundled with vim. Try help ft-ruby-omni.
I just had the same problem, and I actually found a solution for this.
Apparently you have to set in your .vimrc file the following:
let g:acp_behaviorKeywordCommand = "\<C-x>\<C-i>"
This will make acp look in every file included by your source for completions, as if you were actually typing <C-p>. However, it is slow, after trying it I decided to revert using <C-p> when there are no matches and default behaviour in the other cases.

vim TagList only generate tags in the Ctags58 folder

I'm in windows XP, and the vim TagList plugin only behaves correctly if the file I'm coding in is inside the Ctag58 folder. Otherwise it just genetats a list of my open files without tags.
I've tried adding the catalog to path and the vim command :let Tlist_Ctags_Cmd='C:\Program\Ctags58\ctags.exe'
and it didn't work but then in.
I went through the the taglist FAQ:
But the last to "dots" of part 1. of the
http://vim-taglist.sourceforge.net/faq.html
were they speak of temp and tmp variables . I can't make heads or tails of that part.
Could this be my problem? How do i tell...
Mmmm the question is not exactly clear ('it just genetats the file catalog' -- sure, that makes sense).
Without looking any further I'd suggest you add the path to the ctags.exe executable to your environment (Win+Break, advanced, environment, current user, PATH, edit, append ;C:\Program Files\Wherever\ctags\bin (of course you'd have to use the ACTUAL path not this sample).
Then you'd need to restart VIM to test it

How to tame vim's ":find" command

Say, I have files foo.js and bar.css in my project. There is a ":find" command in vim, which find files, matching string. But this command, alas, has some limitations. For example, if I launch this way - "vim", or even this way - "vim ." - there's nothing to be find in js subdirectory. But if I launch vim this way - "vim js/any_file_other_than_foo.js", then calling ":find foo.js" works pretty well.
Since it is not intuitive (i'm working in the same directory, "pwd" returns the same path), my first question is - can anybody explain how to circumvent this issue? And, even broader, is there any way to type something like find foo - and open first file, which name matches pattern foo.
thanks in advance.
You could try
:e[dit] **/*foo* and then press 'tab' to move to the first match.
the ** is a directory globbing pattern, while * is character matching.
If you were so inclined, you could write a simple fuzzy finder command, for more information you can check out the vim tips wiki: http://vim.wikia.com/wiki/Find_files_in_subdirectories
Vim's :find works by searching each directory in the path variable (and ignores pwd). By default, it does not search recursively. That's why find is only working for you when you open a js file. The '.' in path refers to the directory for the current file -- not pwd.
You can change path to include your desired directories:
set path+=$PROJECT/js
See :help path.
One of the magic bits to use is to add ** to a path to search that path recursively:
" search recursively in my project
set path+=$PROJECT/**
" search recursively from the current file's directory
set path+=./**
See :help file-searching for more magic.
A nice plugin that accomplishes a similar effect is Command-T.
The Command-T plug-in provides an
extremely fast, intuitive mechanism
for opening files with a minimal
number of keystrokes. It's named
"Command-T" because it is inspired by
the "Go to File" window bound to
Command-T in TextMate.
Files are selected by typing
characters that appear in their paths,
and are ordered by an algorithm which
knows that characters that appear in
certain locations (for example,
immediately after a path separator)
should be given more weight.should be given more weight.
Here is a screencast of Command-T in action.

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