These files add Vim syntax highlighting and indenting support for the fantastic CoffeeScript language.

Example (nodes.coffee from the coffeescript compiler)

This is a heavyweight/opinionated syntax highlighting file. It's heavyweight in that the only thing NOT colored is function calling and (most) property access. It's opinionated because I slowly add syntax highlighting that helps me avoid the errors I commonly make. I consider both of these pluses but some people don't like it since it results in a visually busy screen.

Most importantly, this syntax file highlights assignment and full function declarations. Sounds minor, but the flip side to Coffeescript's elegant syntax is that there's a significant difference between toString "$@name:$@id, toString: "$@name:$@id" and toString: -> "$@name:$@id" even though there's only a 4 character difference from first to last. Other examples are parens for grouping (foo ('bar')) vs parens for function calls (foo('bar')) and property access (foo['bar']) vs array literals (foo ['bar']).

In addition to the full coffeescript language, javascript globals/keywords/host objects are highlighted. These are completely separted from the coffeescript equivalents in the event you want to highlight them differently they can't be used in identifiers while coffeescript ones can.

In addition, the cursor is automatically indented or outdented based on the surrounding context. For example, hitting the return key after an if statement will indent the cursor one shiftwidth; doing the same after certain return statements -- ones without an attached if or unless statement, that is -- will instead outdent the cursor.

Installation

If you want to be boring, grab the tarball and extract it in your ~/.vim or ~/vimfiles directory like any other vim extension.

If you're feeling adventurous and on an OS that supports symlinks, you can install it the way I install my plugins. Grab my plugin installer rakefile, and put it in your ~/.vim file, and then add alias vim-install="rake -f $HOME/.vim/rakefile-vim-install" to your .rc file. From there, all you have to do is clone a plugin repo, change to the directoy, and vim-install to symlink everything into the proper location. I do this for all the plugins I have installed, which allows me to keep everything up to date easily with git pulls and to maintain my own (generally unrelased) patches through updates. It also allows easy uninstalls: vim-install uninstall.