I have been using Vim for a few months now and have found a few plugins that I can’t live without.
NERD tree makes it super-simple to browse and open files from your filesystem. I’ve mapped the nerd tree toggle command to control-c and then use “j”, “k” and “enter” to find and open the file I want to edit. You can also open the file with “i” and open it in split-screen mode.
I am still learning to work snipMate into my daily use, but when I remember to use it I love it. snipMate copies the most powerful feature from TextMate – snippets – which allows you to type a “snippet” of code, like say “input” when in an HTML file, and then it will fill out the input tag for you. You then can tab to each of the parts of the code that you need to fill out.
Today I downloaded and installed NERD commenter and matchit. Commenter makes it easier to add comments and comment out code for easy testing and matchit extends vim’s ‘%’ operator and makes it possible open and close HTML tags and much more.
I have also been developing on a few different machines and needed a way to keep my plugins and .vimrc file in sync. I decided it would be easy enough to create a git repo at github for my ~/.vim directory to easily share plugins and settings across machines. Feel free to check out the plugins and settings I am using and please share any other good tips and tricks that you have found.