Installation:

Install NERD_Tree first. Then download this module to ~/.vim/plugin/ or the appropriate location on your system and…you’re done.

Install ack (see details at betterthangrep.com ). Depending on your operating system, you need to type something like “sudo apt-get install ack-grep“, “brew install ack” or other. Most of the installers will add ack to your $PATH, so NERD_Tree_Ack.vim won’t require additional configuration. If you’re weird and don’t want to add ack to your $PATH, just add the following line to your .vimrc file:

let g:path_to_search_app = "/full/path/to/ack"

Using it

Open NERD_Tree and point it to your project folder, by typing :NERDtree /path/to/project or by using bookmarks. Place the cursor on a folder and type the letter m. In the menu that will pop up you will have the option “(s)earch directory”. Select it by pressing s and type your pattern. If your search will yield results, you will see a window in the lower part of your screen, with all the results. Navigate with the keys and press to jump to a result. The file will be opened in the last working window.

Don’t forget to rate it if you like it

For instance, today the head of my company’s IT department showed me the following cool trick: if you have an XML file loaded in a buffer and you want to have it properly indented, you just hit Escape in your Vim editor and type

:% !xmllint --format %

… and…Magic!

Anyway, lately I’ve spent some time puting together a list of very useful plugins for PHP/Zend Framework and python/django development in order to speed things up and become more productive. My (g)Vim configuration currently uses:

• Vilight colorscheme by Rob Robbins
• snipMate by Michael Sanders
• NERD_Tree by Martin Grenfell
• django snippets by Rob Hudson
• AutoComplPop by Takeshi Nishida

And a custom gvimrc file. If you want to give it a try, check out my GitHub repository at http://github.com/motanelu/GVim-configuration. Installation is very simple, just follow the instructions below (PS: I’m using GVim. If you’re using Vim replace gvimrc with vimrc):

cd ~/
mv .vim .vim.bak
mv .gvimrc .gvimrc.bak
git clone git://github.com/motanelu/GVim-configuration.git
mv GVim-configuration .vim
ln -s ~/.vim/gvimrc ~/.gvimrc

Post a comment and tell me if you find it useful. If you’re a Zend Framework user, have a look over the snippets.

I also like to customise my tools, and that what drawn me to emacs in the first place. And when I’ve switched over to vim, I’ve tried to write some custom plugins, but with vim it’s not that simple. Vim uses a built in scripting language, which it’s really weird and badly documented and since it can’t be used anywhere outside of vim, mastering it would be a waste of time. So I’ve postponed the customisation of the editor until I had enough time to look over the vim scripting language. Until now. I’ve recently read an article presenting vim scripting in python, and I’ve decided to give it a try. And it proved to be much simpler than I’ve thought.

First of all, install vim’s python support. If you’re an Ubuntu / Debian user, simply pop this in the console:

tudor@thor:~$ sudo apt-get install vim-python

If not, compile vim from source / use your package manager to install vim with python support. After vim is up and running, create the two files in the ~/.vim/plugin/ directory: my_plugin.vim and my_plugin.py.

The my_plugin.vim should look something like this:

if !has("python")
	call confirm("You must have vim compiled with python in order for this to work", 'OK')
	finish
endif

if filereadable($HOME."/.vim/plugin/my_plugin.py")
	pyfile $HOME/.vim/plugin/my_plugin.py
else
	call confirm("Error: my_plugin.py cannot be found! Please reinstall the plugin", 'OK')
	finish
endif

"commands for invoking the functions
command! -nargs=1 MyPluginDoSomething python do_something('<args>')
command! -nargs=1 MyPluginDoSomethingElse python do_something_else('<args>')

This is all the vim script you need to know And now, in my_plugin.py file, write your plugin’s logic in python, knowing that each vim command will call a function from this file:

def do_something( argument ):
    print 'wassup %s' % argument

def do_something_else:
    pass

If you print something in python, it will be shown in vim’s error messages area, at the bottom of the window. But the vim module is available in python allows you to read and write into vim’s buffers and therefore inserting data in the opened document. Type :help python in vim for more details.

I’ve started working on a vim plugin that will aid me with my Zend Framework development. A Zend_Tool integrated with vim that actually does something useful :p