landonb/dubs-vim

Just one developer's tasty Vim IDE.

Dubs Vim

Dubs Vim is just one developer's Vim IDE (or very close to it).

Project Overview

This project is essentially just the lightweight top-level ~/.vim directory that I use.

Almost all functionality is provided by installing other projects using the (newish) package mechanism, i.e., cloning repositories under ~/.vim/pack/<author>/start/<project>.

Rather than hook projects as git submodules, each user is expected to manage their own repositories.

• This author recommends the excellent myrepos multiple repository manager, which pairs well with this author's myrepos extensions and actions, https://github.com/landonb/ohmyrepos

Project Highlights

If nothing else, hopefully you'll find the list of suggested third-party plugins to be useful. While not completely representative of all the best plugins -- it's by no means an inclusive Awesome List -- it represents some of the best plugins I've found, and that I still find to be useful.

I've also written dozen of plugins over the years, to fill in the gaps as necessary. Hopefully you'll find these plugins of interest, as well.

• For convenience, this project installs a help file compiled from all my personally authored help docs, to provide a single point of reference (as there are many, many commands and mappings defined).

Feature Overview

See Dubs Vim Reference for a complete list of features of my plugins, or browse the more terse online help, :help dubs-vim.

Install as Normal Package

If you plan to install the Dubs Vim plugins and want the single-page help, install this project, too.

Using the built-in packages feature, you can simply clone this project to a start directory under ~/.vim/pack, e.g.,

mkdir -p ~/.vim/pack/landonb/start
git clone git://github.com/landonb/dubs-vim.git ~/.vim/pack/landonb/start

If you want access to the best features, install additional packages.

• On Ubuntu, one might run, e.g.,

sudo apt install -y \
   vim-gtk \
   silversearcher-ag \
   exuberant-ctags \
   par \
   ruby-dev

• Dubs Vim also works well with ripgrep (which you can install yourself).

Once cloned and addition packages are installed, restart Vim and rebuild the inline help docs. From within Vim, run.

:Helptags

Install as Top-level Vim Directory

If your user does not already have a ~/.vim directory, you can clone the repository to your user's home directory, and then create a symlink at ~/.vimrc. E.g.,

cd
git clone git://github.com/landonb/dubs-vim.git .vim
/bin/ln -s .vim/.vimrc .vimrc

Next Steps

Install Dubs Vim packages

Install third-party packages

Read the documentation

See Dubs Vim Reference for a list of commands and keyboard shortcuts. The online help, :h dubs, is an abbreviated list of the same.

Configure, personalize, dismantle, etc.

There are a few features you'll need to prime before they'll be of any utility.

1. Make project symlinks for Command-T wrapper.

The <Ctrl-D> command pops up Command-T and points it at the first directory named cmdt_paths that it finds within the ~/.vim folder.

When you run Dubs Vim for the first time, it'll copy the file, pack/landonb/start/dubs_file_finder/cmdt_paths.template, to cmdt_paths in the same directory.

(You can move this directory somewhere private, to put it under your own revision control system; then symlink your path from dubs_file_finder/cmdt_paths.)

Look inside the copied directory and you'll find a generate_links.sh script that you can edit and run to populate the folder. Currently, it just adds links to your Vim files.

You can also do this manually, e.g.,

/bin/ln -s /path/to/projectA /path/to/cmdt_paths
/bin/ln -s /path/to/projectB /path/to/cmdt_paths
...

2. Make list of folders to be easily greppable.

Open the file pack/landonb/start/dubs_grep_steady/dubs_projects.vim and add your project paths to the list of projects. This list is displayed when your search with either \g or the F4 mappings.

(You can also move this file somewhere private, to put it under your own revision control system; then symlink that file from dubs_grep_steady/dubs_projects.vim.)

3. Hack away.

Like most things Vim, after reading the docs and testing a new plugin, you'll want to get your hands dirty. Happy hacking!

Third-Party Distro Package Descriptions

Following is an explanation of the optional aptitude packages that can be installed to enable more features:

• The Silver Searcher is a nice alternative to the built-in grep family of commands, especially since it honors .gitignore files.
• ripgrep is an even faster alternative to ag (and is may have to be manually installed).
• Exuberant Ctags lets you jump to function definitions using Ctrl-]. (You'll have to run ctags on your source to generate one or more tags files first; it's best if you can wire this into your local CI.)
• Par lets you reformat text to a preset width (e.g., press Shift-F2 to intelligently resize a selected text block of code to 80 characters wide, preserving indents, prefixes and postfixes).
• We include the ruby-dev library so we can build the Command-T binary.

Third-party Vim Plugins

Dubs Vim includes and incorporates a number of third-party Vim plugins.

You can generally access each plugin's feature using the normal commands defined by the plugin, but Dubs Vim also remaps and wraps calls to third-party plugins to make them more seamless and easy to access.

See the Dubs Vim Reference for a list of all Dubs Vim commands, including those provided by other people's plugins.

Disclaimer

Dubs Vim mostly adds new key bindings not already mapped by standard Vim or changed by MS-Windows mode (behave mswin). However, a few standard key bindings have been remapped. You probably won't notice the changes, but you might. See Differences from Vim for the list of binding differences.