video In this video, you can see the programs opening together, changing directory together, and not interrupting eachother. I demonstrate how text and programs opened in the shell are not disturbed. I demonstrate how opening files in the file manager opens them in vim. I show the debugging capabilities. I show its reconnection abilities by switching workspaces and then running the script again. I also close the programs entirely and then reconnect them. Finally, I show them quitting together.

envi

Envi is a small programming tool written in bash. It ties together existing tools like vim, vifm (a vi-like file manager), and a shell. It provides a full shell and file manager to vim without any of the quirks and lacking features of plugins that do the same. It is extensible through its tmux servers by merely sending keys.

dependencies

envi needs vifm, tmux, Vim, and a terminal emulator (tested with xterm and st). A tiling window manager is recommended. It also needs gdb if you plan to use the debugging features. The script may not match your use, as it's not meant for public usage. For example- lsview will not work well in vifm, programs are opened in my preferred order.

It also requires Vim to be compiled with clientserver capabilities.

installation

If you don't want cd commands generated by envi to show up in your command history, set the environment variable HISTCONTROL to ignorespace. If you don't want to use the st terminal emulator, place your terminal and an argument that runs commands in the "terminal" variable in envi. The methods use to keep commands invisible require a short PS1. To change this, set the PS1 variable to a short string like '\$' when $TERM == screen* in your .bashrc. Other shell configuration can also be done this way. To install envi in full (debugger and all), type in

make
sudo make install

If you do not plan to use gdb with envi and instead plan to use a tool like gdb -tui instead for visual debugging, simply move envi to /usr/bin, or /usr/local/ bin. If you do plan to write scripts for envi, you may want to install it in full.

operation

hjkl navigates in vifm, and keys work the way you would expect them to based on vi(m) bindings (d, m/', f/F/t/T etc). Working directory of Vim and your shell will be set automatically. Text typed in bash is untouched as its directory is changed. Text files will be opened automatically in Vim. Unknown file types are outputted to $HOME/.envi/unknown and then opened normally in vifm so that you can modify the behaviour later. Behaviour of Vim and vifm on initialization (rebindings, etc) can be set inside $HOME/.envi/vifm-start and $HOME/.envi/vim-start. Quitting inside of Vim with ZZ or inside vifm with ZQ or manually sending envi -q causes all the programs to exit. If you "lose" a server, need to reload configs, or accidentally closed it, run envi again; servers that were already open will reconnect, and missing servers will be created anew. The names of servers are kept in variables, so you should be able to add the option to have more instances open if you wish. envi -o opens files. However, the -o option replaces spaces with escaped spaces. The envi -O option is equivalent to

for i in (arguments); do envi -o $i; done

As such, you can use globbing such as envi -O *.c and other expressions. To see how envi cleans filenames, or to use this output, send envi --c-f, envi --c-t, and envi --cv to see how it cleans strings for vifm, tmux and vim. The hacks used to prevent output from showing in the terminal work with both emacs and vi keys enabled in bash. In the script, single sleep commands are sometimes used to make sure that servers are initialized to avoid expensive loops. envi is not written for other computers, and if it behaves strangely you should increase the length of the sleep commands or write loops that ask tmux if the servers exist yet; this still might not work. See the script for some of the "creative" methods used. Please do not change these; they are based on trial and error. envi will work best on a light system. Even though it's a personal script, feel free to submit issues if you experience any problems.

genvi

envi's gdb interface is called genvi. Call it with any options you want to pass to gdb. File location will not be shown. Line number will automatically be highlighted in Vim as it would be with gdb's textual user interface mode, without any of the eccentricities.

modifying

When you are modifying, most extension should be done by sending keys through the servers. The default names of the servers are tvim for Vim's tmux server, tbsh for the shell's server, and tvif for vifm's server. You can access these with

tmux send-keys -t(servername) (keys)

Vim's built in server capabilities are also used. A tmux server is only used because Vim does not support reconnection. Vim's server can be accessed with

vim --servername vvim --remote-send (keys)

Vim's server is called vvim by default. There are several remote options for Vim. Search Vim's manual for "remote" to find these.

man vim

The simplest way to add new functions is to modify the vifm-start and vim-start files and bind keys to the commands. Look inside the files and study the source of envi to see my style for this. Do not add recursive calls to envi inside envi. Call the functions directly. You may wish to add support for envi and a complex utility such as gdb, as I have done. Two tools are included to help with this. "ftee" is written by racic@stackoverflow, and is included because it allows you to output text to both a fifo and stdout without blocking. "press" is a utility that allows you to filter text from unbuffered programs like python, gdb, tee, or even bash. If you want to see how to do this, look at "genvi"- it is a very short script for gdb.