I have been researching coding editors but everytime I run up against some issue that is 1/2 coded or in the process of getting better. VIM offers everything in terms of a real powerhouse tool without all the UI fluff.
What I want to know is how can I use it to build and compile .Net projects, .cs fro within VIM without shelling out to devenv.exe...
Thoughts?
I'm not connected with the company in any way, but I've heard very good things about ViEmu. If the price were a little lower, I'd get it myself, because I love the editing power of Vim.
MSBuild is a very powerful analog to Ant.
Use msbuild project files to manage your .NET projects, and write a nmake file that calls msbuild.
Map your vi make command to nmake
You can just use :make to do a build
Here is a guide on Vim C# compiling.
In response to the comments -
It sounds like your goal is to have a fully functional IDE that works cross platform for C# development, not necessarily to use VIM. If that's the case, you can use MonoDevelop on all platforms (including Windows, but that's a bit trickier), and since you're probably already using the mono compilers on your other platforms, this might be a nicer option.
If you are on the latest versions of VS, then the solution files can be built with MSBuild, which is basically a NAnt equivalent.
Otherwise, call csc to compile the files yourself.
I use nant as a build file (very simple and flexible) then call :set makerpg=nant\ compile.all
Then whenever you wan't to compile just type :mak
This can be extended with custom error formats etc.