I am looking for recommendations on using VIM as an IDE. I generally code in a number of programming languages, including C, C++, assembler, MATLAB, Maple, BASH scripts, to name a few.
In general, I like to use a single IDE for the bulk of my projects for the sake of consistency, and I have found that I perform about 90% of all my coding in VIM, and occasionally use Eclipse instead for certain projects in C/C++ (ie: projects people have already put together as an Eclipse project, or PIC24/32 projects from www.microchip.com).
I am already very familiar with the basic functionality of VIM (windows vs buffers, text manipulation, scripting), and would like to use it as my primary IDE. I have already taken a few tips from here:
http://vim.wikia.com/wiki/Use_Vim_like_an_IDE#Writing_Code
I already use the nerdTree plugin for directory browsing in a project, etc, but I need to do something about code completion and symbol resolution, as those are my two greatest concerns.
Symbol resolution
I have some limited experience in the use of C-tags, and wanted a suggestion on what I should use if I am working with a VERY large code-base that changes frequently. The projects I work on typically are pulling in header files from at least a dozen other projects, and I would like to be able to jump to the file where a function, constant, or macro is defined quickly (ie: like the CTRL-G feature in Eclipse, "jump to definition"), as well as rapidly get a list of all calls/references to a function/macro/constant/etc (ie: like the CTRL-SHIFT-G feature in Eclipse, "Show all references in project or current working directory").
Tab completion
One of the features I really like in Visual Studio and Eclipse, for example, is when I type in a variable name (ie: pointer to struct) and it resolves the names and types of all structure members and gives me a tab completion list to choose the appropriate member. They also point out when I've incorrectly used "." vs "->" for member access. I've tried superTab in VIM, but I just couldn't get it working. I also want the tab-completion feature to use the same C-tags as generated by the symbol resolution plugin
Handling build output
The final concern of mine is having an auto-generated list of build warnings and build errors. When I, for example, just run "make all" at the command-line prompt, it is a pain to have to read through code listings to manually find all build warnings.
I realize this is a lot to ask, and that I could always just fall-back to Visual Studio or Eclipse, but I really want just a simple cross-platform console-capable modal editor for all my development needs, and none of the major IDE's out there fill this need.
Thank you all in advance.
http://eclim.org/ - bring Eclipse functionality to the Vim editor
https://github.com/scrooloose/syntastic - syntax checker warnings in quickfix list
I think (but haven't checked) that Eclim satisfies #1 and #2 while I'm sure that Syntastic satisfies #3. More things of interest:
https://github.com/Lokaltog/vim-powerline - just nice
https://github.com/kien/ctrlp.vim - quick file finder
https://github.com/tpope/vim-pathogen - plugin manager (to install the others)
And are you aware of omnicompletion via Ctrl-p and Ctrl-n (prev and next) in insert mode? That's not code completion, but frequently does the job.
For the auto-completion part (point 2), I am proficiently using clang_complete.
For a quick setup and reference, try this page: http://zwiener.org/vimautocomplete.html
EDIT: this is for C, C++ and Objective-C only.
I use the following configuration in vim:
zipped file
It has autocomplete based on tag list, ctags, nerd commenter and some more plugins.
Hope it helps.. :)
I have been using Vim as an IDE for about a year now. All of my customization is online at github.
That said, I don't think a Vim beginner should start using vim like this; rather I think the Vim beginner should learn vim incrementally. The only changes that I think are so essential I would make them from the very beginning are:
Remap ESC to jk
Switch : and ;
Set leader key to ,
Finding vim plugin maintenance and configuring is too laborious and relies on external configurations (such as ruby) tricky. What I want is an IDE like Eclipse, Visual Studio, that I can use vim in. I still want to be able to use different modes (command, visual, insert), but I don't want these inbuilt commands to conflict with the IDE's commands.
I've heard PIDA is good for this but looks like a bit of a mission to configure on Mac.
Eclipse has a VIM plugin. Eclipse runs on OS X
http://www.vimplugin.org/
Also, I think the Komodo IDEs and editors have VIM bindings, but I have little experience with them. Apparently, they also run on OS X.
http://docs.activestate.com/komodo/4.4/vikeybind.html
I use Komodo Edit on OS X, Ubuntu and Windows. It's open source, supports a ton of languages and has good Vi/Vim key binding support without getting in the way of itself. It's also easy to add in support for additional key bindings. It's built on the Mozilla code base and can be extended with Add-ons (Remote Drive Tree/Source Tree/MoreKomodo are great examples). I also personally love being able to write macros for myself in either JS or Python to add extra functionality.
The full fledged IDE is worth looking at if you can use the extra features. For most of the things that I work on, I can't use a full fledged remote debugger so Komodo Edit suits my needs.
It also has built in SSH support all in a package that is very responsive on my 5 year old work machine with several 1000 line files open in tabs.
Emacs has a vi emulation mode called Viper ;-)
Besides the vim plugin for Eclipse there is also ViEmu for (amongst others) Visual Studio, if you are not afraid of shelling out some $. Haven't used it though, as vim is my IDE :)
This AutoHotKey script isn't quite what you asked for, but I mention it in case it's helpful.
As you say, PIDA has real Vim, nothing can come close to that. Keybinding emulation only goes so far. It's not that bad to get running on a Mac, Windows is a mission though.
QT creator has Vi bindings.
I have spent lot of time doing research on VIM. I am Windows guy since last 6 yrs and was using VS.
Now started working on Linux. I want to make VIM as close as possible to VS.
I want features like
Project Navigation
Files in Different Tabs
Search in Project
AutoCompletion
I have found plugins for the above requirements
Project Pligin
MiniExplore
Taglist
OmniComplete
I am not able to correctly set vimrc script.
When I try to open file from Project it gets open in different tabs.I want to get it open in different buffers.
Also when I want to close file in buffer , complete window gets closed.
Open taglist and project window makes all mess.
Has any one done settings with these plugin..
Could you guys please post your vimrc files??
It will save lot of time for newbies like me..
Vim is a very different tool than Visual Studio. Plugins may help you get certain bits of functionality you desire, but do not expect them to work exactly like VS, work well together, or even work at all.
If you are looking for a programming environment more like Visual Studio, there are many good graphical IDE's you can use such as NetBeans, Eclipse, Code::Blocks, KDevelop, Anjuta, etc. Some of these tools are, IMHO, better heavyweight IDE's than Visual Studio, and all are available on Linux for free.
You should either learn to use Vim the way it was built to be used, or find a different tool that suits you better. Shoehorning Vim into a surrogate for Visual Studio will probably cause you more pain than it's worth.
Yes it's different to VS, but that doesn't mean it can't be used in the same way. It's just not as easy to do it :)
Personally I go the other way and use ViEmu to get VS to behave like VIM. But I'm not in the same situation as the author of this question.
Why not have a dig through some uploaded vimrc files on dotfiles.org?
You can use the following script, Trinity.
http://www.vim.org/scripts/script.php?script_id=2347
It will require 3 more scripts, and Vim will look like an IDE.
The TagList at left, a file exporer (NERDTree) at right, and Source Explorer at bottom.
Also, you can find some very useful blog entries at
http://kevin-berridge.blogspot.com/search/label/vim
The author, Kevin, explains how to compile solutions form inside Vim. He also shows interfacing and jumping between them which is very useful too.
Furhermore, there is the script vim-visual-studio which can be found at
http://code.google.com/p/vim-visual-studio/
This script is using Python extension. I have Python 2.5 installed in Windows. I am using Gvim 7.2 which is compiled with Python 2.4. So, I have replaced the executables of Gvim as explained here:
http://www.gooli.org/blog/gvim-72-with-python-2526-support-windows-binaries/
So, Gvim became compatible with Python 2.5 and raised no problems. Also, a menu entry "Visual Studio" has appeared as expected. It connects to Visual Studio itself, and it works perfectly. It does not just compiles a file, it can compile a solution containing more than one project as in Visual Studio. You can even use the Vim's 'quickfix' feature. Hope this helps.
If you really want to have vim as the front end, try Eclim. It uses Eclipse as a backend daemon for code completion and project management, and vim as the interface.
If you only like vim because of the vi key bindings, but want it to be more IDE like, you could try the latest MonoDevelop that has it built in.
These plugins used to exist long before vim had tabs. I'd be quite surprised there isn't a way to tune these plugins to split windows instead of opening tabs.
Now I can't help you much as I don't use these specific plugins but other ones. You should look at their help (:h project, :h taglist, etc)
PS: in vim terminology (it will help you browse the help files), what you call "buffer" is actually called "window", while a "buffer" is just the text you are working on, it may be associated to a file, or not. For a given buffer, there may be no or several window displaying parts of the buffer.
you can give a try to eXvim
http://code.google.com/p/exvim/
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Let me preface this question by saying I use TextMate on Mac OSX for my text needs and I am in love with it. Anything comparable on the Linux platform? I'll mostly use it for coding python/ruby.
Doing a google search yielded outdated answers.
Edit: Since there has been some concern about the 'merit' of this question. I am about to start a new Ruby Programming Project in Linux and before I got started I wanted to make sure I had the right tools to do the job.
Edit #2: I use VIM on a daily basis -- all . the . time. I enjoy using it. I was just looking for some alternatives.
http://xkcd.com/378/
Emacs is a wonderful text editor. It has huge power once you become a power user. You can access a shell, have as many files open as you want in as many sub-windows and an extremely powerful scripting support that lets you add all kinds of neat features.
I have been using a ruby-mode which adds syntax highlighting and whatnot to ruby, and the same exists for every major language.
If you keep at it, you can use exclusively the keyboard and never touch the mouse, which increases your editing speed by a significant margin.
If you want to start with something a lot more basic though, gedit is nice... it has built in syntax highlighting as well for most languages based on the filename extension. It comes with the OS as well (though emacs you can easily install with apt-get or some similar package finder utility).
UPDATE: I think gedit is exclusively GUI based though, so it would be useful to learn emacs in case you are stuck with just a shell (it is fully featured in both shell and graphical mode).
FURTHER UPDATE: Just FYI, I am not trying to push Emacs over Vim, it's just what I use, and it's a great editor (as I'm sure Vim is too). It is daunting at first (as I'm sure Vim is too), but the question was about text editors on Linux besides vi... Emacs seems the logical choice to me, but gedit is a great simple text editor with some nice features if that's all you are looking for.
Kate, the KDE Advanced Text Editor is quite good. It has syntax highlighting, block selection mode, terminal/console, sessions, window splitting both horizontal and vertical etc.
I use sublime Text on linux.
Try Scribes . It tries to be a TextMate replacement for Linux
2020 edit: forgotten in the mists of history
I use SciTE
very small and simple text editor.
I like the versatility of jEdit (http://www.jedit.org), its got a lot of plugins, crossplatform and has also stuff like block selection which I use all the time.
The downside is, because it is written in java, it is not the fastest one.
I find Geany (http://geany.uvena.de/) quite good.
I use pico or nano as my "casual" text editor in Linux/Solaris/etc. It's easy to come to grips with, and whilst you lose a couple of rows of text to the menu, at least it's easy to see how to exit, etc.
You can even extend nano, I think, and add syntax highlighting.
Alternative text editors? Try Diakonos, "a Linux editor for the masses". The default keyboard mapping is as expected for cut, copy, paste, undo, open, save, etc.
When I searched for TextMate alternative for Linux, I ended up using Geany. It's not as powerfull, but still nice to work with. Great replacement for Kate.
On Mac OS X, I have used BBEdit since the early 1990's, so I use that as my reference for all other editors. I sometimes use BBEdit to edit files on a Linux box using ftp mode, and that works very well if you have a fast network connection to the Linux box.
I learned emacs two years ago because the rest of the programming team I joined uses it. I find emacs powerful but annoyingly old-fashioned in many ways, but once you have learned emacs, you can use it on any platform (Linux, OS X, Windows). This is the editor I use almost exclusively at work now. It is going to take me years to master all its features, though.
I have also used gedit on Linux and found it very usable, but I haven't tried to use it as my primary editor for any project.
I have a colleague at work who uses Komodo Edit 4.4 (free from activestate.com), running it on a Windows computer but using it in ftp mode so she can edit files on our Linux server. Komodo Edit has many nice features, but it takes a looonnnggg time to launch the first time.
Don't forget NEdit! Small and light, but with syntax highlighting and macro record/replay.
Best one besides Vi? Vim.
SciTE
http://www.scintilla.org/SciTE.html
The best I've found is gedit unfortunately. Spend a few hours with it and you'll discover it's not so bad, with plugins and themes. You can use the command line to open documents in it.
+1 for pico/nano -- lightweight, gets the job done, good help
Friend of mine swears by jed, http://www.jedsoft.org/jed/
First I don't want to start a war..
I haven't used TextMate but I have used its Windows equivalent, e-TextEditor and I could understand why people love it.
I've also tried many text editors and IDEs in my quest in finding the perfect text editor on Linux. I've tried jEdit, vim, emacs (although I used to love when I was at uni) and various others.
On Linux I've settled with gEdit. Although I do use Komodo Edit from time to time. When I'm in a hurry I use gEdit purely because it is quicker than Komodo Edit.
gEdit has plenty of plugins and comes with some nice colour schemes. I reckon once gEdit has a proper code-tidy facility it'll be cool.
I think the only reason I use Komodo Edit is the project file facility.
I have a friend who donated his 'Vi Improved' book in the hope that he can convert me to Vim. The book is over an inch thick and completely put me off in investing time in learning Vim..
Everytime I find an editor - I always find myself going back to gEdit. It is a frills-in-the-right-places editor. Give gEdit a go, it is the default text editor in Ubuntu and Linux Mint.
Here is a link to an excellent guide on how to get gEdit to look and behave (somewhat) like TextMate:
http://grigio.org/pimp_my_gedit_was_textmate_linux
Hope that helps.
I agree with Mike, though I'm a Vim die-hard. I've been using GEdit quite frequently lately when I'm doing lightweight Ruby scripting. The standard editor (plus Ruby code snippets) is extremely usable and polished, and can provide a nice reprieve from full-strength, always-on programming editors.
I've just started using OSX. Free editors of note that I've discovered:
Komodo by ActiveState. No debugger or regex editor (although one comes with Python, i.e. redemo.py) in free version but perfectly usable.
ERIC, written in PyQT.
Eclipse with PyDev is my preferred option for editing Python on all platforms. Nice clean GUI, decent debugger. Good syntax parsing etc.
I've used Emacs for 20 years. It's great and it works everywhere. I also have TextMate, which I use for some things on the Mac (HTML mode is great). If you want to do Ruby development, Netbeans supports Ruby and it also runs on all platforms.
http://www.netbeans.org/features/ruby/index.html
I've seen some blogs, etc claiming that it's the best Ruby environment available.
I use joe for simple (and not so simple) editing when I'm away from Eclipse.
It uses the classic Wordstar keybindings- although I've never used Wordstar, it's a selling point for many people.
It's easy, well-supported, light-weight and it has binaries available for everything.
I love Kate because it has several interesting features (already cited) usually found in (heavier) IDEs. My favorite feature, however, is its terminal window that is very practical for quickly performing the save-compile-execute combo.
Nedit is another valid option, packed with lots of features (and it hasn't lots of dependencies: that's a huge plus IMHO).
For editing in a shell, when I cannot use VIM, I look immediately for pico or nano (but I would not recommend them for continuous development: for rapid editing they are perfect).
If it's just you? Use what you want to use today; switch in mid-stream if you want.
Is it a team? Try to be editor-agnostic. Set standards for white-space (are tabs allowed? How many spaces does a tab represent?), but otherwise allow anyone to use whichever editor they want.
Is it a team doing pair-programming? That's where you may need a team-standard editor, just so that programmers can easily pass the keyboard.
To help implement a standard white-space policy in a shop where one or more coders is using Emacs: You can tell Emacs about your white-space policy with some comments stuck at the bottom of every file source file. For example,
# Local Variables:
# tab-width: 2
# ruby-indent-level: 2
# indent-tabs-mode: nil
# End:
Anyone using emacs (or xemacs) on that file will automatically get the group standard indentation.
Sublime Text 2 is my favorite.
Intuitively understandable and quite powerful.
You can try Emacs with ruby-mode, Rinari (for Rails) and yasnippet which provides automatic snippets like Textmate.
TextMate is a great editor, and there is a way to replicate some of the functionality in GEdit. Check the article out here: http://rubymm.blogspot.com/2007/08/make-gedit-behave-roughly-like-textmate.html to modify GEdit to behave like TextMate.
Vim is a nice upgrade for Vi, offering decent features and a more usable set of keybindings and default behaviour. However, graphical versions like GVim, KVim and even Cream are extremely lacking in my opinion. I've been using Geany a lot lately, but it also has its shortcomings.
I just can't find something in the league of Programmers Notepad, Smultron or TextMate on Linux. A shame, since I want to live in an all open source cyberworld, I'm stuck hopping from one almost-right editor to another.
I personally use MacVim which is basically a GVim for Mac OSx. However I have been reading alot about Redcar, which is a text editor for Linux, which shares a lot of the Textmate functionality. Checkout the links below.
Redcar
LURG Lecture on Redcar