Buildout and Vim

If you're looking to integrate Vim and Buildout for Python development, you've come to the right place. Read on to learn how to integrate these different parts of Vim and add-ons.

YouCompleteMe

YCM is an autocompleter for Vim. YCM talks to a backend server process and uses the Jedi autocompletion library for Python to learn what you're typing and try to complete it for you. Because Buildout uses customised sys.path configuration in its scripts and environments, intergration becomes difficult as the paths are a moving target.

The included vim.cfg Buildout configuration creates a suitable Python interpreter for YCM's server process to use, such that it knows about suitable Buildout packages. You need to do a little work yourself though, and extend ${python-vim:eggs} inside the configuration to ensure the interpreter is aware of the eggs:

[buildout]
extends = https://github.com/davidjb/buildout-vim/raw/master/vim.cfg

[python-vim]
eggs +=
    ${omelette:eggs}
    ... or ...
    ${instance:eggs}
    ... or ...
    ${whatever:eggs}

Beyond this, the config also generates a .vimrc file locally within the Buildout directory. With a suitable plugin for Vim, such as https://github.com/MarcWeber/vim-addon-local-vimrc, this will automatically get loaded, thus ensuring YCM's server process uses the given Buildout-generated interpreter.

Load a Python file inside the Buildout directory somewhere and start autocompleting!