Having a good environment setup is important for effective, fast and easy coding.
We have different IDE's like eclipse, pycharm, sublime etc.. which are powerful and easy to use.
IDE's like eclipse, pycharm, sublime etc.. are resource intensive as they run many features, this is not a problem if you have really great system with powerfull resources.
So, Why bother with VIM:
1. Vim has unique key bindings which makes typing really fast and easy.
2. Vim key bindings makes hand movement at the least.
3. Vim is very light and very fast.
Vim is a simple plain editor but for easy coding we need features like autocompletion, code checker and project navigation. To implement these there are different plugins.
Before we install plugins lets setup vim with basic configuration.
Install vim using your package manager:
Ubuntu: apt-get install vim
ArchLinux: pacman -S vim
Vim uses ~/.vimrc file for configuration settings. Copy the following to ~/.vimrc file
execute pathogen#infect() " run pathogen plugin
syntax on " Highlights syntax like variables, names, classes etc..
filetype on " Useful for detecting files and changing rules
filetype plugin on
filetype plugin indent on
set backspace=indent,eol,start " Indent on hitting backspace
set expandtab " enter spaces when tab is pressed
set tabstop=4 " use 4 spaces to represent tab
set softtabstop=4
set shiftwidth=4 " number of spaces to use for auto indent
set autoindent " copy indent from current line when starting a new line
set pastetoggle= " press f10 and paste or else it will be a mess
set ignorecase " ignore case when searching
au FileType python setl sw=4 sts=4 et " .py files, specific rules
au FileType html setl sw=2 sts=2 et " .html files, specific rulesInstall Plugins:
Pathogen:
Why: It handles all the plugins we install, recomended way to install plugins.
Installation:
Run:
mkdir -p ~/.vim/autoload ~/.vim/bundle && \
curl -LSso ~/.vim/autoload/pathogen.vim https://tpo.pe/pathogen.vimwhich creates ~/.vim/bundle and ~/.vim/autoload directories and copies pathogen.
Add the following line at the beginning in your ~/.vimrc file(neglect if already present)
execute pathogen#infect()Pyflakes:
Why: Its a python code checker, checks the code when we write to file and highlights the errors.
Installation:
Go to https://github.com/kevinw/pyflakes-vim and download pyflakes-vim.zip file then extract it to ~/.vim/bundle/ directory.
Paste the following to ~/.vimrc file(neglect if present already).
filetype on " enables filetype detection
filetype plugin on " enables filetype specific pluginsJedi-vim:
Why: Its the python autocompletion library, suggests python modules as you type.
Installation:
cd ~/.vim/bundle/ && git clone --recursive https://github.com/davidhalter/jedi-vim.gitCtrlP:
Why: Helps in navigating through project, uses fuzzy logic, so no need to remember exact file name.
Installation:
cd ~/.vim
git clone https://github.com/kien/ctrlp.vim.git bundle/ctrlp.vimVim-airline:
Why: Displays beautiful status of current file like its path, vim mode, current line number. Indeed not required if you are minimalist
Installation:
git clone https://github.com/vim-airline/vim-airline ~/.vim/bundle/vim-airlineIn my opinion installing different plugins will be flexible but adds complexity and makes vim slow, so the above plugins(excluding vim-airline) is all we need for effective, fast and easy coding