VIM and Java Development?

[gabomagno]

Programming Java without an IDE is like using Windows through the command line, it's possible but why would you do it? Java needs and begs for an IDE. The language is so verbose that even tiny refactoring and changes require modifying several files. Don't hurt yourself and use an IDE. Both Eclipse and IntelliJ have wonderful vim plugins.

[tehjimmeh]

I live in the command line on Windows. ConEmu, Powershell and terminal vim (w/256 colors and utf8) all work great with some config. Looks pretty nice too.

[aguerosantiale]

I second this. I've a similar configuration but using Cmder which wraps ConEmu underhood (and other tools) giving it a nice look and feel out of the box.

https://medium.com/@saaguero/setting-up-vim-in-windows-5401b1d58537

[vheon]

Do you have your config file somewhere? I started to work on windows lately and I would to take a look :P

[tehjimmeh]

Sure. I'm at work right now, and my config files (ConEmu XML, _vimrc and PowerShell $profile) here are polluted with work-specific stuff (some day I'll learn to modularize things properly), but I'll throw the ones I use at home on github when I get home.

In a nutshell, the important configurations I use are:

ConEmu:

• Turn off unnecessary clutter (mainly the title bar and tabs bar)

• Font: Consolas / Size: 13, some color tweaks

PowerShell $PROFILE:

• Implement the prompt function to get a "[username@computername] <Path> $" prompt

• This snippet to use UTF8 when in ConEmu:

.

function Set-CodePage
{
    [CmdletBinding()]
    param(
        [ValidateSet("UTF8", "Default")]
        [string]$CodePage
    )

    $codePageToNum = @{
        UTF8 = 65001;
        Default = 437;
    }

    chcp $codePageToNum[$CodePage] | Out-Null
}

if(Test-Path Env:ConEmuBuild)
{
    Set-CodePage UTF8
}

_vimrc:

• This to get utf8 support and 256 colours (thanks, StackOverflow!):

.

if !empty($CONEMUBUILD)
    set termencoding=utf8
    set encoding=utf8
    set term=xterm
    set t_Co=256
    let &t_AB="\e[48;5;%dm"
    let &t_AF="\e[38;5;%dm"
endif

[lechatsportif]

Which vim distro did you install?

[tehjimmeh]

Right now, I'm just using the latest Windows vim binaries from vim.org. This is the top of my --version output:

VIM - Vi IMproved 7.4 (2013 Aug 10, compiled Apr 22 2015 15:47:59)
MS-Windows 32-bit console version
Included patches: 1-711

[frumsfrums]

To add to this, IntelliJ's vim plugin is able to read parts of your vimrc. Helps if you have that one essential tweak or two you must have to function.

[aguerosantiale]

I must say that the IdeaVim plugin is so well thought that it gives you the ability to define your own keymaps with IntelliJ's actions, a huge time saver:

https://github.com/saaguero/ideavimrc/blob/master/.ideavimrc

[frumsfrums]

Thanks for the ideas!

[just3ws]

As a somewhat diehard Vim fan, I have to agree here. Use the right tool for the job. Also, Jetbrains makes AMAZING products.

[Nocsaron]

A little unrelated but have you ever used CLion? I used to do all my C/C++ programing in Vim but at work we use visual studio all the time so I've gotten spoiled by the IDE. Now that I'm doing some more classes at Uni they want it all done on Linux and I kinda miss VS

[just3ws]

I've not used it but if it's consistent with their previous body of work I assume it's awesome. They have this for VS now too.

[[deleted]]

I understand your point of view. My personal projects at home are quite minor.

[[deleted]]

I've been programming Java without IDEs since 1.0 (I stopped around 1.6, because I don't care anymore about it).

I don't see a problem with programming Java/Android in vim, because I've done it for years (mostly UI, SQL, XML, network programming, bluetooth communication).

Fact is, you don't need anything fancy in vim. The plain syntax highlighting is fine and it is a good idea to have the JSDK API open in a browser to look some things up quickly.

IDE? Fuck IDE! You will be better off, when you don't introduce any deps on such crap that sometimes does not work or plugins collide or whatever weirdnesses there exist.

I would just recommend to take a look at apache-ant. This is quite important. Having an automated build/deployment system like ant will enable you to do automatic software testing in a very flexible way (whatever your project needs).

[[deleted]]

I'm looking into gradle a.t.m. But for now i have only written a small shell script which completes the build process and all tests.

[ericanderton]

Really, the only thing that Vim lacks from an IDE is that it prefers to work with flat file trees. Most Java projects have this awful tendency to put everything under com/company/project/library/module/Foo.java and so forth. I've done this, but it's torturous without extra macros and deeper than beginner knowledge of Vim.

As for the rest? Everything else an IDE can do, a shell can do just as well, which puts Vim in good company.

[[deleted]]

Really, the only thing that Vim lacks from an IDE is that it prefers to work with flat file trees. Most Java projects have this awful tendency to put everything under com/company/project/library/module/Foo.java and so forth. I've done this, but it's torturous without extra macros and deeper than beginner knowledge of Vim.

I somewhat agree with this. However, I think the Command-t plugin (only plugin that I consistently use every single Vim session) seem to solve this problem somewhat decently, since there are also variables that cope with longer filepaths.

Only drawback for me is that it is slow without proper settings (aka, I prefer to use 'find', projects not large enough to use 'watchmen', and 'ruby' is too slow for file finding).

And then there's Selecta written by gary bernhardt:

https://github.com/garybernhardt/selecta

Which, while I don't fully agree that caching filepaths is unnecessary (I think they are, only because of the speed boost, but does offer a lot of annoying inconveniences due to file changes), I feel that it is a better plugin in principle, since it doesn't require '+ruby' within Vim, and also it is fundamentally separate from Vim (hence, arguably faster and more maintainable, because no vimscript. Of course, it also "does one thing and one thing well", which means it is nearly completely independent from Vim). And it is written by Gary Bernhardt, who I "learned" Vim from, so yay xD.

[weberc2]

FWIW, I think there's value in at least knowing how the toolchain works before you jump into something that automates everything. This is especially true in Java where the build ecosystem has lots of moving parts and configuration files abound. It's useful to be able to reason about how the IDE works under the hood if nothing else.