Which vim plugins are really nice to have?

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Accepted Answer

These are my essentials:

The_NERD_tree - A really handy tree-structured filebrowser. I have mapped mine to F3 like this:


    map <F3> :NERDTreeToggle <CR>

The_NERD_Commenter - A really really handy way to comment out lines and blocks of code. Use "leader + c + space" to toggle comments on and off. "Leader + c + s" does a "pretty commenting" in some languages (that is / / in java instead of // and so on)
snipmate - Who can live without snippets? Write the snippet keyword, or just the first letter and press Tab. A suggestion of which snippets to input will be shown, choose one, and vóila, you have a whole python class with just inputting cl and pressing Tab!
snipmate_snippets - "Just" a bunch of snippets for different kind of languages and frameworks.
Gundo - In fact vim has a sort of revision control built into it undo-history. So you can actually go back in different branches - it's just a bit cumbersome todo and control by hand. What Gundo does is create a fine ascii-art-visualization of your undo-history and shows diffs and stuff like that. Want to see Gundo in action check out this screencast from Vimcasts.org
delimitMate - simple autoclosing of quotes, parenthesis, brackets, etc.

More will come! And I've made this post a community wiki - so just go ahead and append whatever addon you cannot live without!

Answer 2

2

My favourite addon by far is FuzzyFinder. This addon gives you a fast way to find the files you are looking for. It gives you a little prompt in the top of the screen where you can type your query and underneath is a list of all the matching files and directories. Is has fuzzy matching so you can enter a couple of characters and get the file you want. You can see a screencast of it in action here: FuzzyFinder screencast.

link

answered 24 Jan '12, 15:26

mbudde
31●1
accept rate: 0%

Did he just say "pussy finder" in that screencast? This is a MUST-HAVE addon! :)

In all seriousness, it really looks like a nice addon! I will go look at it right away :D

(24 Jan '12, 15:29) valberg

You should also check out Vundle: https://github.com/gmarik/vundle It makes it really easy to install and update vim addons.

(24 Jan '12, 15:35) mbudde

1

I actually tried Vundle once, but it broke all the time, so stuck to vim-addon-manager. Will give Vundle another try sometime.

(24 Jan '12, 16:12) valberg

Answer 3

To really start using plugins I highly recommend vim-addon-manager.

Install new addons from within vim, handles dependencies ie. :ActivateAddons FuzzyFinder
Installed addons are only activated on launch with some .vimrc boilerplate.

Just go to: https://github.com/MarcWeber/vim-addon-manager/

Either read install guide there, or just check out my .vimrc, you only need the SetupVAM function and then modify wahtever plugins you need. Anything below is not related to VAM. https://raw.github.com/frejsoya/dotfiles/master/.vimrc

Note that adding the boilerplate and restarting vim automatically installs VAM.

A few highly recommended workflow changing plugins. Just better and without the crappy editor.

FuzzyFinder. Find everything, files, buffers etc... with quick text matching.
clang_complete. Think eclipse/xcode for C/C++ code completion, error code checks. Really fast! (Do enable libclang support).
fugitive. Never leave vim for tedious git task. Diffs, commits, status, remove/add to index.
pyflakes. Use flakes to highlight the worst python errors.
vim-ipython. Run file/blocks of highlighted in an existing instance of ipython (possibly remote). Just like matlab.
snipmate. Quick snippets for all kinds of formats, helps you to not type anoying boilerplate.

Do read vimdocs of each plugin. some require manual keybinding setup.

Which vim plugins are really nice to have?

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