Table of contents

• What's the purpose of vim-ide ?
• Installation
• Functionnalities (comparison with GUI IDE)
• Plugins (See each plugins repository to have more informations)
• Improvements

I think every vim user agrees with me if I say that vim is a wonderfull editor thanks to its key mapping and its modes.

At first, vim is not configured to develop with. One needs to install a ton of plugins, search the internet to know which plugin does what one needs, etc. You can also write your own plugin if you are confortable enough and/or too lazy to search extensively for the existing one that would match your needs.

This takes time, and we (developers) don't want to lose time configuring our IDE from scratch.

So, vim-IDE is here to help you. It helps you by integrating a list of plugins which will transform vim in a full IDE, and it's easy to install.

1. Clone this repository, save your old vim configuration, and make symlinks to vim and vimrc. You can paste these following lines which do the job.

git clone https://github.com/vim-IDE/vim-IDE.git ~/.vim-ide
tar -cvf old.vim.configuration.tar ~/.vim ~/.vimrc
rm -rf ~/.vim ~/.vimrc
ln -s ~/.vim-ide/vim ~/.vim
ln -s ~/.vim-ide/vimrc ~/.vimrc

2. Open the vimrc file. You have a plugins list, with the description. You can choose which plugin you want to install by comment/uncomment the line "Plugin 'vim-IDE/[plugin name]'". For example, if you don't use the go language, and so, you don't want to install the plugin, you only have to comment "Plugin 'vim-IDE/vim-go'" line by inserting a '#'. So you have

Plugin 'vim-IDE/vim-go'

# Plugin 'vim-IDE/vim-go'

If you decide to not install a plugin, you have to comment the configuration file (if there's one). They are at the end of the vimrc file and saved in the directory vim/configuration.

3. Install plugins by opening vim and type

:PlugInstall

or directly in a terminal

vim +PlugInstall

4. (Optionnal) Plugins are frequently updated, and you can be interrested to get the updated plugins. You can manually update by typing, in vim, the command

:PlugUpdate

or directly in a terminal

vim +PlugUpdate

You can also use a cron job to update automatically the plugins by inserting the command

vim +PlugUpdate

in the cron file.

• Templates: work with C/C++, LaTeX, Shell (using c-vim, latex-suite, bash-support)
• Snippets: insert snippets rapidly with vim-snippets. It improves your productivity by avoiding you to type a long function or instruction.
• Syntax highlightning/checking: work with a lot of languages, and warning you as you type for syntax errors.
• Integrated version control: Git integration (using fugitive)
• Refactoring: work (at the moment) with java using JavaRename (using Eclim), and OCaml (using merlin, manually installed)
• Building: Fast access to build and deploy functionnalities.
• Autocompletion: work with a lot of languages (using YouCompleteMe)
• Project management: work with C, C++, PHP, HTML/CSS, JS, JAVA, PYTHON (using Eclim)
• Fast commenting: work with a lot of filetype (using NerdCommenter)
• Android development: with Eclim, it provides a complete interface to Eclipse functionnalities.
• Markdown edition: By default in vim.
• Web development: syntax checker and highlighting (default in vim). Improved with two plugins for HTML5 and CSS3, supporting LESS and SASS, and providing Bootstrap snippets. It matches tags with MatchTagAlways and tags are automatically closed with vim-closetag. An useful plugin (vim-coloresque) highlights the text in the corresponding color it describes. Improves php completion with phpcomplete.vim and the node development with vim-node.

• Programming languages support:

• Vim supports a huge range of programming languages by default. But, it exists some plugins that improve some programming languages support.

  • C: c.vim
  • Shell: bash-support.vim
  • LaTeX: vim-latex
  • Go: vim-go
  • Arduino: vim-arduino-ino

• Syntax highlightning:

• Project management:

  • Eclim: interface to eclipse (need Eclipse Luna). Please see the "Improvements" section about Eclim. Need to be installed manually.
  • NerdTree: File manager. Show in a split windows a tree with your files. It's an alternative for Eclim if you edit something not supported by Eclim.

• Autocompletion:

  • YouCompleteMe: show popup for autocompletion when typing.

• Snippets:

  • vim-snipmate: provide snippets in a large category of filetypes

• Comments:

  • NerdCommenter: provides shortcuts to (un)comment lines in several filetype

• Build and deploy applications:

  • Eclim: Build and deploy Android applications. Need to be installed manually.

• Version control:

  • Vim-Fugitive: provides git command by using :Git add, :Git commit, etc directly in vim.

• Real-time syntax checking:

  • syntastic: provides a real time syntax checking. If you forgot a brace, a parenthesis, a semi colon, or something else, syntastic prevents you. It works for a lot of programming languages.

• Source code browsing:

  • taglist.vim: provides a list with all defined variables and functions and give direct access to their definition.

• Web development:

  • html5.vim: improved HTML5 support.
  • vim-css3-syntax: improved CSS3 support.
  • MatchTagAlways: highlight tags couples.
  • vim-less: support for less syntax.
  • scss-syntax.vim: vim syntax for scss files.
  • vim-closetag: automatically close tag.
  • bootstrap-snippets: bootstrap snippets. It's not needed to remember all code to insert a carousel or a button, just type "carousel" or "btn" and bootstrap-snippets inserts automatically the code. Autocompletion is activated by default.
  • phpcomplete.vim: Improve php complete.
  • vim-node: Improve node development..
  • vim-coloresque: highlight the text in the form #rrggbb or #rgb in the corresponding color.
  • gulp-vim: Wrapper to gulp
  • emmet-vim: emmet-vim is a vim plug-in which provides support for expanding abbreviations similar to emmet.

• Arduino development:

  • vim-arduino-ino: provides keybindings and access to template like arduino-ide. Use ino.

• MISC:

  • numbers.vim: improve line numbering
  • vim-airline: Provide a rich status line, showing the branch you're working on.
  • vim-better-whitespaces: provides some commands to delete spaces at the end of lines, extra tabs, etc.
  • vim-task: provides highlight and shortcuts to manage a todo file. Extensive with your own file extensions.

• Eclim: For now, you need to install manually. See http://eclim.org/ to install it and for documentation.
• c.vim: You can choose which indent style you want, which are in a specific branch. By default, vim-IDE use the master branch of the git repository. If you use the allman indent style, type

Plug 'vim-IDE/c.vim', {"branch': 'allman'}

in the vimrc before launching :PlugInstall. For now, only the allman indent style is available. Others are coming soon. You're free to help and share your own indent style.

• Add more plugins improving programming languages support in the default vimrc such as OCaml (merlin), javascript (vim-javascript), scala (vim-scala), etc.