Vim and Qt Creator’s Quick Browse
Although this is not much related to KDE, or at all in fact, I decided to post it on my KDE development blog simply because there are so many KDE (and other) developers using Vim as their main (and only) IDE.
As I said earlier, I am a Vim fan, and I can not see that it will change in the foreseeable future. But, I have to say that, although I don’t find it a complete replacement of Vim’s Project plugin, that Quick Browser of Qt Creator is a very nifty feature.
So, I decided to start writing a Vim script which will emulate the Quick Browser behaviour. And so it started. The first version was a proof of concept one and it was designed so that the quick browser showed its results in a side panel (just as the Project plugin does).
And it worked quite fast.
The problem was that the Project, Code Navigator and my Quick Browser couldn’t work together very well – each one wanted it’s own window/buffer. So, I decided to start writing a simple Python (yes, Vim now supports Python scripting) framework that allows multiple plugins (called runners – took the name from Plasma/KRunner and I’m not ashamed) which are based on that framework to work together in harmony.
The project waits approval at SourceForge under the name Vide (obviously short for Vim – IDE). Currently only Quick Browser runner exists, but I’ll add more later.
Project management
And, that’s not all. There will be project meta-data which will allow you to define different build tools (cmake and qmake come to mind), …, and everything else I come up with… Since I’m bored and have to take my dog for a walk, this is all for now. So stay tuned.
Great news!
I’ve been tracking my projects using only my memory and the lifesaver ‘grep’. I’ve never got used to the Project plugin because it messes with my other open buffers. Those runners will be quite useful
Comment by Caio Romão — 16 November 2008 @ 21:37
Interesting project. Will probably try it.
Then name is quite fun for a french: vide == empty
Comment by Aurélien Gâteau — 16 November 2008 @ 22:27
@Caio
Well, grep *is* a lifesaver, but can be very slow on large projects – that’s the reason I started using ctags intensively.
@Aurelien
Hehe, well, I agree it is funny. But I must say that I find that fact strange since the word should have come from the Latin videre – to see.
Comment by Ivan Čukić — 17 November 2008 @ 07:42
Moin
Please update us about this when you improved it or fixed things new users will find. Looks very interested.
And there are several KDE guys using VIM
Comment by Carsten Niehaus — 17 November 2008 @ 18:17
@Carsten
Yeah, only several
I’ll post updates as I go on. When the initial work is done, I’ll upload the code to SF SVN so that everyone can join the fun
Comment by Ivan Čukić — 17 November 2008 @ 18:22
Got your ~/.vim stuff packed up somewhere?
Comment by Jan Kundrat — 17 November 2008 @ 20:06
@Jan
Well, I have multiple .vim directories – created one for each project I’m working on. I don’t think it would be useful for anyone since there are some huge side-effects (one of the extra reasons for making Vide).
When I finish, you’ll get all the sources and the rc files.
Comment by Ivan Čukić — 18 November 2008 @ 09:15