michaeldehaan.net

Vim is awesome for working with small projects where you know where everything is. What if you don’t? Here’s my current setup, as a form of backup. Hopefully this is useful to someone else as well.

ctags setup:

#!/bin/sh
cd basedev
ctags -R --totals=yes --tag-relative=yes \
        --extra=+f \
        --PHP-kinds=+cf \
        --regex-PHP='/abstract class ([^ ]*)/\1/c/' \
        --regex-PHP='/interface ([^ ]*)/\1/c/' \
        --regex-PHP='/(public |static |abstract |protected |private )+\s*function\s+([^ (]*)/\2/f/'

.vimrc:

nmap <C-f> :NERDTreeToggle<CR>
nmap <C-b> :BufExplorer<CR>
nmap <C-t> :TlistToggle<CR>

Installed VIM plugins:

• BufExplorer
• Nerd Tree
• Tag List
• Ack

So to open a file in the source tree, I can just:

cd ~/code/basedev
:tag SomeClassName

And then the rest of my workflow is:

Control+f   = Toggle the file explorer tree
Control+b  = Pick an open file to edit
Control+t   = List functions in the file  (Control+w to change windows)
Control+]   = Jump to tag under cursor
:Ack Foo   = Look for files that contain Foo and potentially open them

All of this works without dealing with vim split windows or tabs, which are, IMHO, both very annoying.

Simple, and works. And, best of all, it is not Eclipse.

Suggestions on your other favorite vim plugins are very welcome. While Ack is nice on the command line, I think there are probably better file search plugins for vim that people prefer?. I am not using any “project” style plugins at the moment. My workflow for remembering a workspace is, so far, writing down the names of classes I’ve found along the way that might be worth remembering, and opening them again with “:tag Foo” as needed. I’ll edit this page over time to reflect my current setup.