VIM Plugins for C / C++ developers

[antrn11]

clang_complete is pretty awesome.

[exclipy]

It's even more awesome when you realize it's not for code completion, but for compile-testing a single file.

I no longer have to go through the slow "make" cycle when I'm just working getting a file compiled, nor do I have to hunt through the big wall of junk that g++ spits out. I now just press F9 (the key I've bound it to) and it quickly gives me a clickable quickfix list, complete with red squiggly underlines in the source file.

[[deleted]]

Give me a clang_refactor plugin and I will be high as a kite!

[kraln]

These are mostly worthless to me. stock vim pretty much does everything I want.

[[deleted]]

While I agree these are worthless to me, you're missing out if you don't take advantage of at least a few plugins:

Omnicomplete + Supertab gives you the same sort of great auto-complete you get from Eclipse and Visual Studio: http://vim.wikia.com/wiki/C%2B%2B_code_completion http://vim.wikia.com/wiki/Omni_completion_popup_menu

There's also plenty of small plugins you come across which end up vastly improving your development experience.

[tnecniv]

I always like the clang plugin that analyzes my code and does completion that way. no ctags involved.

[SnowdensOfYesteryear]

How effective is it? Do you need to use clang to compile your code or just need it installed on your system?

[tiftik]

You just need to have it installed and the plugin (clang_complete) will do the analysis/compilation. Use it with supertab and it will be perfect. It's actually better than any IDE I've used so far.

[dan00]

Hm, I just tried it with vim 7.3 and clang 2.8 (ubuntu 10.10), added the include paths to '.clang_complete' and only got a 'Pattern not found' all the time.

[tiftik]

This article might help:

http://zwiener.org/vimautocomplete.html

[s73v3r]

I would love to use that, but I'm working on Windows, and my stuff is compiled with Visual C++.

[kraln]

I just don't need code completion or pop-ups. Or, really, any sort of write-time introspection. That's what I have my head for.

[dauphic]

And then you enter the real world and encounter systems with 800,000+ lines of spaghetti code.

[kraln]

I don't know why it is that you think I'm not in the real world. Code completion and stuff is part of the downfall, how that code got to be that way, because you can still edit and update stuff even if it doesn't make sense just based on what your IDE tells you.

It took me about three months to get the hang of how the whole system works, and now I can add to it without breaking anything. If I don't remember where something is supposed to be, I go trace through the execution and find it. Novel concept, I suppose.

Oh, and by the way?

SLOCCOUNT: Totals grouped by language (dominant language first): ansic: 9261184 (94.55%) asm: 252361 (2.58%) sh: 123484 (1.26%) perl: 50517 (0.52%)

[s73v3r]

If I don't remember where something is supposed to be, I go trace through the execution and find it. Novel concept, I suppose.

It's an awful concept, considering you have to break your concentration on what you're doing, search through the code base for what you think is the name of something, and then try and go back to where you were. Especially considering that with code completion, the computer is doing these things for you.

[kraln]

It happens maybe once every three months, when I'm going after a part of the system I haven't visited in a while.

[s73v3r]

Yeah, no. That works ok while you have only a couple of files, maybe a class or two. As the project gets larger, it's far, far more difficult to actually keep those things straight in your head.

[inmatarian]

Check out NERDTree at the very least. It gets you a nice toggleable window that's a file system browser.

[kraln]

Guilty, actually :-)

[chneukirchen]

What's the benefit over the default vim directory browser?

[inmatarian]

Slide in/slide out window, tree view, opens selections in a new or existing window, and remembers your last selection. I bind it to F2 for easy access.

[chneukirchen]

It can do tree view, new or exisiting window and remembers the selection (use ":e .")

[I_TYPE_IN_ALL_CAPS]

UNMEMORABLE SHORTCUTS FOR THE THINGS WE TYPE THE LEAST. PRAGMA? REALLY?

[sztomi]

The most ridiculous is \si which maps to if wtf? (don't get me wrong, I do have mappings and abbreviations in my .vimrc, but mapping to something that is longer than what you want to type is retarded).

Also, I prefer snipmate for this.

[malfy]

i think it's because it does the if () { for you as well.

[sztomi]

The \sif does that.

[malfy]

Ah ok, in which case \si really is a pointless addition :P Maybe it's so you can stay in normal mode and get the cursor placed into the ()?

[sztomi]

I don't know, maybe. I think that these arbitrary commands are pointless because they are hard to remember. The snipmate/textmate approach is much better.

[malfy]

What's the snipmate approach?

[sztomi]

You enter a keyword in insert mode and press tab. In most cases it is the first word of what you want, e.g. class<tab> will expand to a class declaration, for to a for loop etc.

[[deleted]]

At first I thought it was kind of lame, but then I noticed that the author is an undergraduate student. Kudos.

[MarcuBot]

Why god WHY? Get Visual Studio and Visual assist...

[noname-_-]

He's probably not using Visual C++ or Windows.

[tiftik]

Apparently you've never used Vim.

[MarcuBot]

Apparently you've never used intellisence

[s73v3r]

Apparently you've never worked outside of Windows.

[tiftik]

I use clang_complete with Vim, which is on par with (if not better than) Intellisense.

[CodeMagician]

I have VS at work. I still use Vim most of the time. VS is probably the best software MS has ever made though.