Janus: Carlhuda's vim Distribution

This is a basic distribution of vim plugins and tools intended to be run on top of the latest MacVIM snapshot.

We (Carl and Yehuda) both use this distribution for our own use, and welcome patches and contributions to help make it an effective way to get started with vim and then use it productively for years to come.

At present, we are still learning to use vim ourselves, so you should anticipate a period of rapid development while we get a handle on the best tools for the job. So far, we have mostly integrated existing plugins and tools, and we anticipate to continue doing so while also writing our own plugins as appropriate.

In general, you can expect that the tools we use work well together and that we have given careful thought to the experience of using MacVIM with the tools in question. If you run into an issue using it, please report an issue to the issue tracker.

Mailing list

The mailing list is hosted at Google Groups, please join it for discussion and announcements.

Pre-requisites

Janus is built primarily for MacVim on OSX. Download it here.

Alternatively, you can use Janus with the bundled console vim installation on OSX (via Terminal), or with any other vim or gvim installation.

Linux users can install gvim for an experience identical to MacVim. On Debian/Ubuntu, simply apt-get install vim-gnome. For remote servers, install console vim with apt-get install vim-nox.

On a fresh Ubuntu install you also have to install the packages rake, ruby-dev, curl and make before running the install script and exuberant-ctags for ctags support.

Installation

0. for i in ~/.vim ~/.vimrc ~/.gvimrc; do [ -e $i ] && mv $i $i.old; done
1. git clone git://github.com/carlhuda/janus.git ~/.vim
2. cd ~/.vim
3. rake

or

curl https://raw.github.com/carlhuda/janus/master/bootstrap.sh -o - | sh

Note that MacVim and Janus must be compiled using the same version of Ruby. This may cause problems for users of RVM or rbenv. To solve, execute:

rvm system
brew uninstall macvim
brew install macvim
curl https://raw.github.com/carlhuda/janus/master/bootstrap.sh -o - | sh
rvm default

or

If you use Babushka you can using the following script to install Janus along with MacVim (will also setup mvim on your path)

babushka joshholt:janus

Customization

Create ~/.vimrc.local and ~/.gvimrc.local for any local customizations.

For example, to override the default color schemes:

echo color desert  > ~/.vimrc.local
echo color molokai > ~/.gvimrc.local

Create ~/.vimrc.pre for any customizations that need to be run before the loading of ~/.vimrc, e.g. changing of <Leader>.

If you want to add additional Vim plugins you can do so by adding a ~/.janus.rake like so:

vim_plugin_task "zencoding", "git://github.com/mattn/zencoding-vim.git"
vim_plugin_task "minibufexpl", "git://github.com/fholgado/minibufexpl.vim.git"

Plugins hosted at vim.org use a unique URL for each version. If you want ~/.janus.rake to point to a plugin hosted there, use the GitHub mirror at https://github.com/vim-scripts to automatically point to the latest version:

vim_plugin_task "bufexplorer", "git://github.com/vim-scripts/bufexplorer.zip.git"

If you do not wish to use one of the plugins Janus provides out of the box you can have it skipped using the skip_vim_plugin method in ~/.janus.rake:

skip_vim_plugin "color-sampler"

Note: Skipping the plugin will only apply to installation. It won't remove configurations or mappings Janus might have added for it.

Updating to the latest version

To update to the latest version of the distribution, just run rake again inside your ~/.vim directory.

Intro to VIM

Here's some tips if you've never used VIM before:

Tutorials

• Type vimtutor into a shell to go through a brief interactive tutorial inside VIM.
• Read the slides at VIM: Walking Without Crutches.
• Watch the screencasts at vimcasts.org
• Watch Derek Wyatt's energetic tutorial videos at his site
• Read wycats' perspective on learning vim at Everyone who tried to convince me to use vim was wrong
• Read this and other answers to a question about vim at StackOverflow: Your problem with Vim is that you don't grok vi

Modes

• VIM has two modes:
  • insert mode- stuff you type is added to the buffer
  • normal mode- keys you hit are interpretted as commands
• To enter insert mode, hit i
• To exit insert mode, hit <ESC>

Useful commands

• Use :q to exit vim
• Certain commands are prefixed with a <Leader> key, which maps to \ by default. Use let mapleader = "," to change this. If you want this to be in effect for uses of in your .vimrc, make sure to define this in the ~/.vimrc.pre
• Keyboard cheat sheet.

Features

This vim distribution includes a number of packages built by others.

Base Customizations

Janus ships with a number of basic customizations for vim:

• Line numbers
• Ruler (line and column numbers)
• No wrap (turn off per-buffer via set :wrap)
• Soft 2-space tabs, and default hard tabs to 2 spaces
• Show tailing whitespace as .
• Make searching highlighted, incremental, and case insensitive unless a capital letter is used
• Always show a status line
• Allow backspacing over everything (identations, eol, and start characters) in insert mode
• <Leader>e expands to :e {directory of current file}/ (open in the current buffer)
• <Leader>te expands to :te {directory of current file}/ (open in a new MacVIM tab)
• <C-P> inserts the directory of the current file into a command
• Automatically resize splits when resizing the MacVim window

"Project Drawer" aka NERDTree

NERDTree is a file explorer plugin that provides "project drawer" functionality to your vim projects. You can learn more about it with :help NERDTree.

Customizations: Janus adds a number of customizations to the core NERDTree:

• Use <Leader>n to toggle NERDTree
• Ignore *.rbc and *~ files
• Automatically activate NERDTree when MacVIM opens and make the original buffer the active one
• Provide alternative :e, :cd, :rm and :touch abbreviations which also refresh NERDTree when done (when NERDTree is open)
• When opening vim with vim /path, open the left NERDTree to that directory, set the vim pwd, and clear the right buffer
• Disallow :eing files into the NERDTree buffer
• In general, assume that there is a single NERDTree buffer on the left and one or more editing buffers on the right

Ack.vim

Ack.vim uses ack to search inside the current directory for a pattern. You can learn more about it with :help Ack

Customizations: Janus rebinds command-shift-f (<D-F>) to bring up :Ack .

Align

Align lets you align statements on their equal signs, make comment boxes, align comments, align declarations, etc.

• :5,10Align => to align lines 5-10 on =>'s

Command-T

Command-T provides a mechanism for searching for a file inside the current working directory. It behaves similarly to command-t in Textmate.

Customizations: Janus rebinds command-t (<D-t>) to bring up this plugin. It defaults to <Leader>t.

ConqueTerm

ConqueTerm embeds a basic terminal inside a vim buffer. The terminal has an insert mode in which you can type commands, tab complete and use the terminal like normal. You can also escape out of insert mode to use other vim commands on the buffer, like yank and paste.

Customizations: Janus binds command-e (<D-e>) to bring up :ConqueTerm bash --login in the current buffer.

Note: To get colors working, you might have to export TERM=xterm and use ls -G or gls --color

indent_object

Indent object creates a "text object" that is relative to the current ident. Text objects work inside of visual mode, and with c (change), d (delete) and y (yank). For instance, try going into a method in normal mode, and type v ii. Then repeat ii.

Note: indent_object seems a bit busted. It would also be nice if there was a text object for Ruby class and def blocks.

surround

Surround allows you to modify "surroundings" around the current text. For instance, if the cursor was inside "foo bar", you could type cs"' to convert the text to 'foo bar'.

There's a lot more; check it out at :help surround

NERDCommenter

NERDCommenter allows you to wrangle your code comments, regardless of filetype. View :help NERDCommenter for all the details.

Customizations: Janus binds command-/ (<D-/>) to toggle comments.

SuperTab

In insert mode, start typing something and hit <TAB> to tab-complete based on the current context.

ctags

Janus includes the TagList plugin, which binds :Tlist to an overview panel that lists all ctags for easy navigation.

Customizations: Janus binds <Leader>rt to the ctags command to update tags.

Note: For full language support, run brew install ctags to install exuberant-ctags.

Tip: Check out :help ctags for information about VIM's built-in ctag support. Tag navigation creates a stack which can traversed via Ctrl-] (to find the source of a token) and Ctrl-T (to jump back up one level).

Git Support (Fugitive)

Fugitive adds pervasive git support to git directories in vim. For more information, use :help fugitive

Use :Gstatus to view git status and type - on any file to stage or unstage it. Type p on a file to enter git add -p and stage specific hunks in the file.

Use :Gdiff on an open file to see what changes have been made to that file

Gist-vim

Nice gist integration by mattn. Requires exporting your GITHUB_TOKEN and GITHUB_USER as environment variables or setup your GitHub token config.

Try :Gist, :Gist -p and visual blocks.

ZoomWin

When working with split windows, ZoomWin lets you zoom into a window and out again using Ctrl-W o

Customizations: Janus binds <Leader><Leader> to :ZoomWin

Additional Syntaxes

Janus ships with a few additional syntaxes:

• Markdown (bound to *.markdown, *.md, and *.mk)
• Mustache (bound to *.mustache)
• Arduino (bound to *.pde)
• Haml (bound to *.haml)
• Sass (bound to *.sass)
• SCSS (bound to *.scss)
• An improved JavaScript syntax (bound to *.js)
• Map Gemfile, Rakefile, Vagrantfile and Thorfile to Ruby
• Git commits (set your EDITOR to mvim -f)

Color schemes

Janus includes the vim color sampler pack, which includes over 100 popular color themes:

• jellybeans
• matrix
• railscasts2
• tango
• vibrantink
• vividchalk
• wombat
• xoria256

Use :color vibrantink to switch to a color scheme.

Janus also has a few customized versions of popular themes:

• jellybeans+
• molokai
• railscasts+
• vwilight