Vim as Visual Studio IDE

Question

hi Guys

I have spent lot of time doing research on VIM. I am Windows guy since last 6 yrs and was using VS. Now started working on Linux. I want to make VIM as close as possible to VS. I want features like Project Navigation Files in Different Tabs Search in Project AutoCompletion

I have found plugins for the above requirements Project Pligin MiniExplore Taglist OmniComplete

I am not able to correctly set vimrc script. When I try to open file from Project it gets open in different tabs.I want to get it open in different buffers. Also when I want to close file in buffer , complete window gets closed. Open taglist and project window makes all mess.

Has any one done settings with these plugin.. Could you guys please post your vimrc files?? It will save lot of time for newbies like me..

Answer 1

Vim is a very different tool than Visual Studio. Plugins may help you get certain bits of functionality you desire, but do not expect them to work exactly like VS, work well together, or even work at all.

If you are looking for a programming environment more like Visual Studio, there are many good graphical IDE's you can use such as NetBeans, Eclipse, Code::Blocks, KDevelop, Anjuta, etc. Some of these tools are, IMHO, better heavyweight IDE's than Visual Studio, and all are available on Linux for free.

You should either learn to use Vim the way it was built to be used, or find a different tool that suits you better. Shoehorning Vim into a surrogate for Visual Studio will probably cause you more pain than it's worth.

Answer 2

If you really want to have vim as the front end, try Eclim. It uses Eclipse as a backend daemon for code completion and project management, and vim as the interface.

If you only like vim because of the vi key bindings, but want it to be more IDE like, you could try the latest MonoDevelop that has it built in.

Answer 3

Yes it's different to VS, but that doesn't mean it can't be used in the same way. It's just not as easy to do it :)

Personally I go the other way and use ViEmu to get VS to behave like VIM. But I'm not in the same situation as the author of this question.

Why not have a dig through some uploaded vimrc files on dotfiles.org?

Answer 4

These plugins used to exist long before vim had tabs. I'd be quite surprised there isn't a way to tune these plugins to split windows instead of opening tabs. Now I can't help you much as I don't use these specific plugins but other ones. You should look at their help (:h project, :h taglist, etc)

PS: in vim terminology (it will help you browse the help files), what you call "buffer" is actually called "window", while a "buffer" is just the text you are working on, it may be associated to a file, or not. For a given buffer, there may be no or several window displaying parts of the buffer.

Answer 5

You can use the following script, Trinity.
http://www.vim.org/scripts/script.php?script_id=2347
It will require 3 more scripts, and Vim will look like an IDE. The TagList at left, a file exporer (NERDTree) at right, and Source Explorer at bottom.

Also, you can find some very useful blog entries at
http://kevin-berridge.blogspot.com/search/label/vim
The author, Kevin, explains how to compile solutions form inside Vim. He also shows interfacing and jumping between them which is very useful too.

Furhermore, there is the script vim-visual-studio which can be found at
http://code.google.com/p/vim-visual-studio/ This script is using Python extension. I have Python 2.5 installed in Windows. I am using Gvim 7.2 which is compiled with Python 2.4. So, I have replaced the executables of Gvim as explained here:
http://www.gooli.org/blog/gvim-72-with-python-2526-support-windows-binaries/
So, Gvim became compatible with Python 2.5 and raised no problems. Also, a menu entry "Visual Studio" has appeared as expected. It connects to Visual Studio itself, and it works perfectly. It does not just compiles a file, it can compile a solution containing more than one project as in Visual Studio. You can even use the Vim's 'quickfix' feature. Hope this helps.

Answer 6

you can give a try to eXvim http://code.google.com/p/exvim/