- TUTORIAL -

This post is part III for the Vim adventures series, it starts here.

Vim’s role

When I first learnt Vim, I was disappointed to find that it is not very good at replacing the more modern features of IDEs:

I haven’t seen any great IDE plugin solution for iOS development.

Completion plugins can make vim sluggish

Even simple and fast navigation solutions (like ctags) are not as good as IDE navigation

Vim emulations inside IDEs are not a perfect solution either, they deter me from using Vim but they don’t emulate using Vim’s the most advanced features.

That is why I decided to use each tool for their strongest purpose:

Vim is amazing for general text/code editing and refactoring

My IDE (xcode in that case) is good enough for debugging and project browsing/tinkering.

Working with Vim alongside XCode can be painful if you do not have a way to go quickly from one editor to the other. That’s what the next section is all about.

Workflow integration with XCode

First of all, I want to be able to load project-specific settings.

Because sourcing local configuration files in insecure, I call it by manually, add this to your .vimrc:

command ! - nargs = 0 Loc so . vimlocal

You can then source your .vimlocal with :Loc

.vimlocal: (place it at the root of each project)

set errorformat = % f : % l : % c : % . %#\ error : \ % m , % f : % l : % c : % . %#\ warning : \ % m , % - G% . %# set makeprg = xcodebuild\ - quiet\ - project\ Sands . xcodeproj\ - scheme\ Sands\ - configuration\ Debug nnoremap < silent > < leader > r : wa < bar > silent exec "!xcoderun.sh " . getcwd (). "/ Sands.xcodeproj &" < bar > redraw !< CR > nnoremap < silent > < leader > i : wa < bar > silent exec "!xcodeopen.sh " . getcwd (). "/ Sands.xcodeproj " . line ( '.' ). " " . @% . " &" < bar > redraw !< CR >

Line 1 and 2 allows me to use :make

Line 3 allows me to run the project in xcode, if the compilation fails, xcode opens, otherwise, it stays in the background.

Line 4 allows me to open the currently visited file/line in xcode.

Place these two files (with execution rights) somewhere in your $PATH (if you want to use these with macvim, don’t forget to set your path in .profile ).

Usage is as follows:

xcoderun.sh $PathToXcodeFolder $xcodeproj xcodeopen.sh $PathToXcodeFolder $xcodeproj $linenr $PathToFile

xcoderun.sh:

#!/bin/bash osascript -e " if application \" XCode \" is running then -- check if the application is running but not visible in the dock tell application \" System Events \" if visible of process \" Xcode \" is false then -- activate xcode and reactivate the previous app tell application \" System Events \" set activeApp to name of first application process whose frontmost is true end tell tell application \" Xcode \" to activate activate application activeApp end if end tell end if tell application \" Xcode \" open \" $1$2 \" set workspaceDocument to workspace document \" $2 \" -- Wait for the workspace document to load with a 60 second timeout repeat 120 times if loaded of workspaceDocument is true then exit repeat end if delay 0.5 end repeat if loaded of workspaceDocument is true then set actionResult to build workspaceDocument repeat if completed of actionResult is true then if status of actionResult is succeeded then set actionResult to run workspaceDocument else activate end if exit repeat end if delay 0.5 end repeat end if end tell " > /dev/null

xcodeopen.sh:

#!/bin/bash osascript -e " tell application \" Xcode \" activate open \" $1$2 \" set workspaceDocument to workspace document \" $2 \" -- Wait for the workspace document to load with a 60 second timeout repeat 120 times if loaded of workspaceDocument is true then exit repeat end if delay 0.5 end repeat if loaded of workspaceDocument is false then return end if end tell " > /dev/null #xed -l $3 doesn't seem to scroll xed $4 osascript -e " tell application \" System Events \" tell process \" Xcode \" -- got to line keystroke \" l \" using command down keystroke \" $3 \" keystroke return end tell end tell " > /dev/null

For a quick edit, I can open a file in MacVim using xcode’s ‘Open with external editor’ mapped to Alt-E (it requires MacVim to be associated with the current file’s type).

Using these methods, I spend as much time as possible in vim and I quickly switch to XCode whenever I need to use some of the more modern features.

To autocomplete or not to autocomplete

At first, I missed Intellisense while coding in Vim. Intellisense is great - just like syntax checking on the fly, it saves time.

But my desire to use Vim outweighed its shortcomings and over time I got used to coding without these modern features. I suspect that being able to do without it will make me a better programmer in the long run.

This post is part III of the Vim Adventures series. Here is part IV. Feel free to shout me a good oul Tweet @PierreAclement…