A common reason for not using Vim for Python coding is that it has a weak out-of-the-box support for Python, especially when compared modern IDEs like PyCharm or VS Code. With the advancements over the last two years, nearly all the niceties of modern IDEs can now be made available in vim. With this repository it takes 5 minutes to set up Vim as a powerful Python code editor/IDE with a minimal but comprehensive set of features.
To avoid bloat, I have tried to keep the most essential features for Python coding. These are features that I reach for on a regular (daily) basis.
Language Help
- Code Navigation - go to definition, references, type definition, implementation
- Linting & Diagnostics - static type checking, errors, warnings
- Intellisense auto-complete - recommend variables in scope, object methods, function parameters,
- Display docs - popup documentation of classes and methods
- Auto formatting - Automatically format according to standardized style guides
- Visual debugging - (as opposed to command line) debug with variables, call stack, and step through code etc.
- Pythonic Folding and indentation - Fold classes, functions
General goodness
- Fuzzy file (name) search - open files by partially matching with file names
- Fuzzy full-text search - search for arbitrary patterns in files
- File tree - visualize the directory tree and open files
- Easy git operation - list unstaged files, compare diffs, stage files with one keystroke
This is required for vimspector. For Mac OS, brew install vim. For debian/ubuntu use the provided script bash install_vim_debian.sh.
For MacOS brew install node. For debian/ubuntu use the provided script bash install_node_debian.sh
If you want all of these features, and don't mind starting vimrc from scratch, simply clone this repository and run bash setup.sh. It will overwrite your .vimrc, but save the old one as .vimrc.backup . This is done to automate installation while avoiding a clash with the previous setup.
It uses Plug as the plugin manager and has a separate vimrc file with keybindings/configurations corresponding to each plugin that you can customize. You can even exclude the plugin and the corresponding vimrc file if you don't want to use it. If you fork this repo, and push your customizations, you can easily setup vim anywhere (e.g. friend's computer, servers). The setup script will automatically install the vim plugins and coc extensions.
For full text search, I like using ripgrep (rg), a fast regex search written in Rust, for full text serach, (exposed as :Rg via fzf). To install ripgrep on your system follow these installation instructions.
For Debian sudo apt-get install ripgrep
The installation script adds the default keybindings for each package (for e.g. coc.vimrc). But feel free to edit them and make them your own. Each plugin has good documentation on how to update the keybindings.
Most default terminals come with just 16 colors but provide the specify true colors corresponding to them. Most color schemes for vim however, use truecolors and only work properly with GUI vim (Gvim, NeoVIM etc.). If they use colors outside the 16 defined for the terminal, then it leads to unreadable mess. Many color schemes however provide the ability to use just 16 colors and provide a mapping from tehese 16 colors to truecolors, the caveat being that you need to configure your terminal (emulator). I've used the solarized color scheme along with a mapping for the Mac terminal.
To get set the terminal colors to solarized, git clone https://github.com/tomislav/osx-terminal.app-colors-solarized.git and import a .terminal file into preferences.
The setup.sh script will take care of setting the color scheme and activating it.
We will use the following plugins
- CoC to get modern code help from a language server (over LSP) like Code navigation, linting, autocomplete, docs, formatting
- Vimspector for visual debugging
- SimpylFold for python specific code folding for vim, FastFold to speed up folding
- IndentPython to follow PEP 8 while indenting python code
- CtrlP for fuzzy file, buffer, mru, tag, etc finding
- FzF for fuzzy full-text search with ripgrep
- Fugitive for git operation
- NerdTree a tree (file) explorer
I have been using vim for around 10 years now, and switched to coding in Python on a regular basis around 7 years ago.
While Vim did offer intellisense-like abilities (ctags) for C/C++, it had little support for Python (AFAIK).
Around 4 years ago, as I started working with a large Python codebase, and PyCharm with Vim keybindings seemed like a more pragmatic choice.
Python is a lot more tolerable with types and linting. And PyCharm had good intellisense and autocomplete too, which made life much easier.
Last year, I tried VS Code, which is now roughly up to par with PyCharm for most usecases, again with vim keybindings.
However, I felt I was coding slower in PyCharm or VS Code overall, despite the convenience of all the IDE-like features.
Some of the keybindings would misfire, and I often had to google "how to do X in Pycharm/VSCode" and learn new keystrokes or shortcuts.
Meanwhile, a lot had happened in vim land over the last four years, most importantly appearence of projects like CoC, Ale and Vimspector,
which brought most of the useful IDE like features back to Vim. And thus I decided to create a Vim setup for myself.
It took me about a day, but I feel satisfied with the development experience and increased my coding/code-manipulation speed drastically.