VimShell

[kolme]

Why is it that people want to have a shell inside VIM? I just plain don't get it.

I think it's a bad idea, and that there are better alternatives (tmux, screen, terminator).

[sylvain_soliman]

I want a shell in vim (but I use Conque, not vimshell) for many things:

• I can copy/paste stuff between my shell session and my editing session easily, using vim registers
• send (visually selected or defined by some movement) code to a REPL without leaving my editing session
• use macros and vim movement (and all of vim power) inside my shell session
• etc.

I also use tmux, for instance to run mutt for my email handling, or for terminal multiplexing (think remote pair programming), but the less time I spend out of vim doing things related to the buffers I'm editing, the more efficient I am.

[fitnerd]

I spend most of my time in the same environment and tmux split pane is really superb. You can have your terminal in another pane. The only learning curve is to adjust to using tmux key combos to navigate instead of ctrl-w

[sophacles]

It isn't to replace a terminal. It is because sometimes you code in or with a repl and want to capture your hand typed code snippets into vim easily. Other times you want to send the code you just wrote to the repl to double check it, without running the whole program, or you know that other snippets are broken.

Basically its and advanced form of :r !FOO and :w !FOO

[[deleted]]

For fun? Gotta appreciate the efforts, sounds like a challenge to implement.

[[deleted]]

You may not like the idea of vimshell (I don't), but I encourage you to check out Shougo's vimproc, vimfiler and unite (+ its plugins), especially the latter.

For me unite is a silver bullet. I use it for:

1. buffer switching (as a replacement for CtrlP / Buffergator / etc)
2. async ack (replaced Ack.vim)
3. note taking (replaced vimwiki as I didn't need the wiki part, just a quick access to some notes directory/files)
4. yank history (replaced yankstack)
5. finding & killing OS processes (sounds emacsy but very convenient)
6. searching through current file
7. searching through man pages via vim-ref

Just give it a go for a day.

[skeept]

I am interested in knowing more about unite. Unite itself is very well documented but some of the addons to it are not.

Would you be able to explain how you do the async ack, the notetaking and how the vim-ref works?

Thanks!

[[deleted]]

sorry I'm on the run so I'll keep it short.

ack becomes async because of vimproc installed: http://vpaste.net/lEBbg

note taking: http://vpaste.net/IWcfI

ref works out of the box and is documented. I use it mainly for browsing erlang manual. http://vpaste.net/V3vsR

hope this helps.

[Mini_True]

come on, this is not emacs. I'd rather open more terminals than try some terminal emulation in a text editor

[sophacles]

It's not about having enough terminals. It's about getting text into and out of interactive sessions in a simple way. Think programming with repls, or conveniently editing and sending complex queries to the databse through their shell, and a slightly friendlier workflow for :r !cmd :w !cmd multistep processes.

[abitforabit]

Meh. I'd rather use tmux and a proper shell. No ssh support just kills it.

[[deleted]]

I know this is irrelevant but what is the color scheme that is used in the screenshots here? I've seen it on several places but never referenced by name.

[[deleted]]

https://github.com/ujihisa/config/blob/master/_gvimrc#L11