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The Ultimate Vim Distribution

vim.spf13.com

21–30 of 90 posts

Re: The Ultimate Vim Distribution

#21
post #8
post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In term sof new stuff that's true, but there are a lot of things that modern plugins provide that obsolete the traditional way of doing things. For instance, people using EasyMotion never have to worry about counting how many words ahead they're moving and then typing c69w or whatever. And likewise, there are some things that everybody should have in their .vimrc, like incremental search, and it doesn't make sense to…

There can absolutely be improvement on some default Vim settings. 'hlsearch' should definetly be the default, and I think it is a crime that 'hidden' isn't. There are easily dozens of other examples. However I think these should be made defaults in Vim itself, not in some grabbag of stuff we hand new users on their way in. I think it is important that every Vim user knows exactly what ways their setup differs from th…

> 'hlsearch' should definetly be the default

Not really. I often use (incremental) search just to move around, and I don't want the highlight to distract me, especially with a really common pattern. I would consider using it if the highlight disappeared immediately after the search is over, but as far as I know there is no such setting, so I only enable it from time to time.

This just proves that it's really hard to agree on defaults.

Re: The Ultimate Vim Distribution

#22

I don't get why this is loaded down with useless plugins... if you're using ctrlp/command-t, you don't need nerdtree. Vundle isn't as good as pathogen, neocomplcache isn't as good as supertab + clang_complete, and it lacks gundo, rooter, ultinips, and maybe other things. https://github.com/Diablo-D3/dot_vim

I use vim extensively and I use both Ctrl-P and NERDtree. Many, many people I know use both.

They serve difference purposes for me. I use NERDtree to create/rename/move files and quickly change my CWD (looks like you use rooter for CWD). I use Ctrl-P to switch buffers and quickly open files.

On the note of neocomplcache, supertab + clang_complete doesn't provide as good support for languages outside of C++. Working with python a lot, neocomplcache works better for me than supertab. The actual functionality of it isn't quite the same either.

Saying vundle isn't as good as pathogen is silly, because vundle is a layer on top of pathogen-like package management. Everyone I know who uses pathogen has to use some system on top of pathogen to actually install their list of vim plugins whenever they switch machines (bash script, ruby script, another vim plugin...).

Re: The Ultimate Vim Distribution

#23
post #4

Wow, that's a lot of good stuff. I'd recommend this to anyone starting with vim.

I think that is the point. Anyone starting now can make their own decisions and approach an enriched distribution like this with new eyes (beginner's mind?)

Anyone else might just need a 'standard' vim because they work on remote terminals into servers on which custom packages cannot be installed, or perhaps they are used to the 'old ways'.

Re: The Ultimate Vim Distribution

#24
post #11

I realize this is a different project, but since it looks similar: installing Janus was the worst decision I ever made while looking to improve my Vim experience. It actually made Vim worse , sometimes by just slowing things down, other times because of the lack of quality control in the bundled plugins. One plugin actually caused data loss many times – it completely froze the editor when a certain syntax pattern was…

This is my project. I was surprised to see it on HN today. It has a lot in common with Janus on the surface. IMO Janus is also a good project.

Where it differs is spf13-vim is focused on cross platform dependency, keeping with vanilla vim feel and having no external dependencies (with the exception of git).

My understanding on Janus is that it focuses on Ruby (spf13-vim supports Ruby well, but Python, JavaScript, PHP, Shell, Scala and a bunch more as well). Janus includes many plugins that depend on Vim Ruby support and is definitely focused on the MacVim platform.

My goal was a Vim configuration you could run anywhere whether Linux, Mac or Windows to efficiently develop in any language.

Hopefully you will find the quality control is good, general feedback is very positive. If you find issues please submit a issue on github or even better a pull request. You can see that I'm very responsive to pull requests.

Re: The Ultimate Vim Distribution

#25

This seems very similar to Janus ( https://github.com/carlhuda/janus ). It has almost the exact same bundles and setup process.

See my comment above. It's similar. Some material differences are that It doesn't require Ruby on the host system to install. This is a huge difference.

It only requires git and vim to install. The bundles have some similarities, but again key differences here are that none of these bundles require vim being compiled with +python or +ruby support.

Lastly it's focused working well for editing any language in any OS.

No criticisms of Janus, it's a good project, just took a different approach to the same problem.

Re: The Ultimate Vim Distribution

#26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is vundle worse?

I dunno, I had problems trying to make it do something, but I forget what. I almost want to say it was git submodule related, but it was like a year or more ago.

If I'm not mistake, vundle doesn't use git submodules, pathogen does.

Re: The Ultimate Vim Distribution

#27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm curious as to why you (or anyone) would prefer pathogen to vundle? Vundle just seems like pathogen except with less manual work.

Vundle is strictly better unless you automate your software updates and want to be able to update your vim plugins without having to launch vim to do so. Pretty tenuous but maybe some sysadmin-inclined people really prefer this.

I previously used pathogen + git submodules .. It was very challenging to manage and much harder to keep up to date.

Vundle has proved a significantly better system for keeping things managed and uses the exact same approach and code as pathogen. It's hard to criticize vundle and support pathogen since they are so similar.

Re: The Ultimate Vim Distribution

#28

Installed it, but now I'm getting this error when starting vim: > E117: Unknown function: fugitive#statusline > E15: Invalid expression: fugitive#statusline()

please report this issue in Github. I'd be happy to help.. It sounds like fugitive is being triggered in a directory that isn't being tracked by git... but it would be better to continue the dialogue on Github.

Re: The Ultimate Vim Distribution

#30
post #3

I have said it before here when people have discussed packaging up Vim stuff, and I stick by it: I really don't see this taking off. Switching to using this does not appeal to me, an existing Vim user, and I think I am not an exception. If this does something new that I like I'll gladly throw that part into my setup, but there really isn't any reason at all that I can see for wanting to use this. I don't think this i…

This.

Vim is vim is popular because it is a highly configurable tool that each user can tweak to be just right.

But,

1) things like this will get new people using vim. Without usage, code rots.

2) things like this teach me all sorts of vim I did not know.

In re 2: I really want to see their vimrc file without having to install this.

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