Hacker News Reader

Comment by adriand | Hacker News Reader

From what I've seen of vi (mainly as a result of editing files directly on a server via ssh), it seems like an efficient text editor, undoubtedly. But what about if you're constantly bouncing between different files in a project? Like a Rails project, for example, with its many different files for models, views and controllers?

I.e. how good is it at handling projects, as opposed to just files?

View on HN

There are a lot of ways to use Vim on multiple-files/projects, and the documentation is probably the best place to start.

You can also plug it into Eclipse via eclim http://eclim.sourceforge.net/

There are two plugins which have helped me enormously when dealing with large projects: bufexplorer and nerdtree. Check them out, seriously.

It is good, especially with rails.vim and NERDtree installed. fuzzy_file_finder is super useful as well, can't recommend it enough.

Honestly, my current solution to that is to get my current directory correct when I start (:cd ~/Programming/project) and then just :e app/controllers/users_controller.rb when I need a file. Tab completion makes it fast enough that it's not worth optimizing faster.

Most vi users I know use a combination of gnu screen and bash job control to accomplish this sort of thing.

i use a file that looks like this:

    " session.vim
    tabe file1
    tabe file2
    tabe file3
    ...

when i start work, i do gvim -S session.vim and i'm all set.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com