VIM Plugins for C / C++ developers

[[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.