VIM_CONFIG

INTRODUCTION

This is a vim configuration created by duwanis.

It's mostly geared towards doing Ruby development on an OS X machine; hence a lot of the configurations are Ruby-specific and/or depend on functionality available in MacVim. But even if you're not a ruby dev and you don't work in OS X, there might be some useful or otherwise interesting ideas in this config.

The master branch is considered 'stable' - I play around with stuff I'm not sure I like in the 'experimental' branch, so be sure to look there too if you're just trawling for config ideas.

NEWBIE-FRIENDLY

This config is written to be newbie-friendly - basically, when I introduce someone to Vim, I want to be able to say "go through the vim tutorial, then copy my config, read the README, and you'll be good to go." So I've tried to be explicit here, but you shouldn't expect to pick this config up and run with it if you've never used Vim before - go through the vim tutorial (:help vimtutor) first, at least. :)

INSTALLATION

Though you'll probably want to just examine this vim config to see what I've used, if you're TOTALLY new to vim, you might want to install it and try it out yourself. That's cool. Here's how:

1. Fork this repository (so you have your own copy for when you want to make changes).
2. Install the homesick gem (this makes it really easy): sudo gem install homesick
3. Install your copy of the vim_config repository using homesick: homesick clone your_github_username/vim_config (assuming you cloned it on github)
4. Symlink it using homesick: homesick symlink your_github_username/vim_config
5. Open vim. There will be errors this first time because you haven't installed any of the plugins yet. Run :BundleInstall to tell Vundle to install all of the packages for you (more on Vundle below).
6. Restart vim. Enjoy.

FEATURES

Some of the general changes to default Vim functionality:

1. Leader is set to ; - the mapleader key defaults to \ in Vim, which seems kind of... out of the way. I know a lot of people set their mapleader to be the comma key so that it's close to the home row; I prefer to have mine easily within reach.
2. Keybindings - I generally try to make my keybindings match some kind of mnemonic, and they almost always start with Leader (I'm just going to use ; for the rest of this README, but if you change Leader substitute whatever character you use). Notable keybindings:
   • ;w, ;W: writes the current buffer (and closes it if you use W)
   • ;q, ;Q: close the current window (and all others if you use Q)
   • ;h, ;j, ;k, ;l: navigate between windows. Life's too short for .
   • ;;: opens a vim command prompt (equivalent to :). For when you're too lazy to hit shift.
   • Buffer navigation - ;b switches to the last buffer you had open in the current window (useful for toggling back and forth between two files), and ;B opens the Ctrl-P buffer window.
   • Tag navigation - ;t either jumps to the definition of the current word or displays a list for you to choose from if it's ambiguous. ;T pops you back up the tag stack (it returns you to where you were before you last navigated to a tag definition). ;s will always show you the list, even if there's only one match - this is useful for checking the signature of a method without leaving the file. ;rt creates/refreshes your tags file (hopefully in the future you won't have to use this - I'd like to set this up on an autocommand) - you will need to have exuberant ctags installed in order to take advantage of this.
3. Files remember where your cursor was when you last had them open.
4. Temp files are saved in a central location rather than colocated with your files.
5. Display features:
   • a subtly colored line is displayed at the 80-character mark, to encourage you to write code in short, readable lines.
   • trailing whitespace is highlighted red in normal mode. Most of the time it's not harmful, but when it matters it's a huge pain to find it.

STRUCTURE

This vim config makes use of the Vundle plugin. Vundle allows plugins to be split into their own individual folders rather than jumbled together in vim's default locations. This means that if you want to copy this config but don't like a few of the plugins, you can very easily identify what needs to be removed.

• bundle - this is the special folder vundle uses to store plugins.
• config - this is where all the custom config files are kept. If you look in the vimrc file, you'll see where everything in this folder is loaded recursively (even subfolders, if you're obsessive about organizing your config settings).
• config/private - this folder is included in .gitignore in case you have some personal stuff that you don't want to share (for example, if you want to blog using vim, but you don't want to keep your username and password in a git repository somewhere :D).

PLUGINS

Plugins are all defined in .vimrc; if you want to remove any just delete its line from .vimrc and remove the respective folder in your bundle directory.

For some of the plugins below I just use the out-of-the-box configurations; for the ones that I don't I have their configuration in its own file in the config directory (e.g. my Ack.vim settings are in config/ack.vim).

Ack.vim

Ack.vim lets you run searches throughout the current working directory. The command is :Ack, and I've created a keybinding (;a) that prompts you for a search term. :help Ack will give you more information.

Autoclose

Autoclose automatically creates closing parens, braces, what-have-you when you enter the corresponding opening pair. It generally saves you a lot of typing. Run :help AutoClose.txt if you want more information about this plugin.

Ctrl-P

Ctrl-P is a plugin that does fuzzy file-finding for you. It does this in a few modes, the ones I use almost exclusively is the standard file finder (bound to ;f), although it also provides a mode for navigating MRU (most recently used) files. :help ctrlp should give you more information.

Endwise

Endwise is like Autoclose above, except that it works for Ruby and Vimscript as well, putting "end"-type statements in place as necessary when you type. There isn't a helpfile for Endwise, presumably because it's so simple and configurationless that there wouldn't be a point in writing one.

Fugitive

Fugitive is perhaps the single most useful plugin I have in my configs. It's a native Vim interface for interacting with Git repositories, and as you might expect provides a lot of functionality. You'll want to read up on it using :help fugitive if you're not familiar with it. I have the following keybindings set up by default:

• ;gs: pulls up the git status buffer
• ;gl: shows the git log
• ;gd: shows the git diff
• ;gb: shows the git blame for the current buffer
• ;gp: runs git push
• ;gu: runs git pull

Gist

This is a pretty useful little plugin that lets you post stuff to gist.github.com directly from inside vim. Run :help gist to see details on how to use it.

Indent Guides

Most IDEs provide you with some kind of a dotted line or other visual aid to help you track long indented bodies of code. Vim doesn't by default, but this plugin adds it in. I don't use it often and try not to write code where it would be necessary, but sometimes it's helpful. ;ig toggles the indent guides. :help indent-guides will give you more information if you're interested.

NERDTree

NERDTree is the second-most useful plugin I have, after Fugitive. NERDTree acts like a project drawer - it will open a thin buffer along the left side of your Vim session that displays the contents of the current directory and allows you to interact with it. ;d is set to toggle this window on and off, but you'll definitely want to run :help NERDTree and read up on everything you can do with this plugin.

Powerline

Powerline is a very sexy statusline plugin that puts a lot of information at your fingertips by default, and does color-coding on your status bars based on window type, whether it's the active window, and what mode you're in. :help powerline is useful if you want to customize this.

Rails.vim

Rails.vim provides a slew of niceties for interacting with Rails applications from vim. Rather than go through everything here, just take a look at :help rails if you're interested.

Repeat.vim

Repeat.vim is basically a utility plugin that makes actions some other plugins take repeatable using . like normal vim operations.

RVM.vim

I use RVM to manage my Rubies, and RVM.vim allows me to put the current rvm version in my statusline. It also provides a few vim commands to let you switch RVM versions from inside vim - run :help rvm to read more.

Solarized

I'm a huge fan of the Solarized colorscheme, so that's installed and loaded up by default.

Supertab

Supertab is tab-completion for insert mode. Just start typing a word and hit tab. :help supertab gives you more info.

Surround

Surround is a plugin that provides some keybindings for working with surrounding characters. If you want to quickly surround this sentence with parentheses or change the single-quotes around that word to double-quotes, Surround is your plugin. See :help surround for info.

Syntastic

Syntastic does syntax checks on certain file types and provides errors inside of vim for you whenever something's awry. It's a great sanity check even if it is perhaps a bit over-zealous on HTML-type files... and it integrates fabulously with Powerline. :help syntastic for more info.

Tomdoc.vim

I've started using TomDoc for documenting my Ruby code, and wanted a syntax file I could load up that would make my TomDoc comments stand out a bit and be easier to read. That's what Tomdoc.vim does.