Vim Tweaks on Windows

To be frank, getting vim and Windows to play nice is a bit of a pain in the ass. Here are some tips and tricks to get the most out of vim on Windows.

Power Tools

If you want a pretty slick setup without too much hassle, check out Fabio Akita ‘s vimfiles. Here’s a list of some of the bad-ass plugins that I find particularly useful (full list can be found on the GitHub repo):

fugitive
Command-T
surround
rails

Make it Sexy

I absolutely love the Solarized theme. If you use Akita’s vimfiles, you already have it installed (courtesy of yours truly).

Here are a couple other cosmetic changes from my .vimrc:

if has("gui_win32") || has("gui_win32s")
  set guifont=PragmataPro:h10
  set background=dark
  colorscheme solarized
endif

" Taggle Solarized light/dark background using F5 key
call togglebg#map("<F5>")

" No space between lines
set linespace=0

" Make csharp code use 4 spaces for tabs
autocmd FileType cs setlocal expandtab shiftwidth=4 softtabstop=4

If you don’t already own a copy, go buy PragmataPro – thine eyes shalt thank thee.

Visual Studio

Add gVim as an external tool. Go to Tools > External Tools > Add and plug in the following:

Title: &Vim
Command: C:\Program Files (x86)\Vim\vim73\gvim.exe
Arguments: --servername VimualStudio --remote-silent +"call cursor($(CurLine),$(CurCol))" $(ItemPath)
Initial directory: $(SolutionDir)

By specifying --servername VimualStudio, you’ll have a dedicated vim process just for Visual Studio.

Fixing Problems

Here are some problems I came across. If you have any of the following problems, see if the given solution will work for you.

#1 – CommandT::VIM Conflicts with ::VIM

line 74
NoMethodError: undefined method `command' for CommandT::VIM:Module

Solution: See this page for help.

#2 – CommandT Crashes Vim

Solution: Following the advice here solved my problem. It appears that there’s a bug in vim that was patched as of version 7.3.088.

You may also have to build CommandT. To do so, you’ll need to have the Ruby DevKit installed. Then, enter the following in shell (change the paths to reflect your system):

c:\RubyDevKit\devkitvars.bat
cd C:\Users\Charles\vimfiles\bundle\Command-T\ruby\command-t
ruby extconf.rb
make

#3 – Fugitive’s GDiff Fails

Error detected while processing function <SNR>12_BufReadIndexFile..<SNR>12_ReplaceCmd:
line  26:
E302: Could not rename swap file
Press ENTER or type command to continue

Solution: One of the answers on this StackOverflow question should do the trick.

#4 – Mysterious Blank Screen

If you have a blank screen until you press a key, vim probably ran into a problem and displayed a warning. In my case, I needed to tell CSApprox to shut up:

" Put this at the very top of your .vimrc:
let g:CSApprox_verbose_level=0

Anything Else?

If there’s something that you think I’m missing, let me know!

cstrahan