Any good tutorial for moving from eclipse to vim?

Question

I am currently using eclipse for a JAVA project. I always wanted to use VIM for my project. Is there a good resource or tutorial that can help me?

Answer 1

I have been vim diehard for years (and still). However, I finally succumbed to the temptation of Eclipse, and I would not look back (I needed to make a lateral movement to Intellij, but that's a different story).

Having said that, I launched Eclipse with this Vim plugin (note: others are available), and it works very well. I retain the power of Vi / Vim based on the keyboard and get the power of Java Eclipse. I would highly recommend this approach. Despite the many Vim plugins, nothing comes close to the language tools for refactoring and coding modern IDEs.

Update: 01/20/2015. This plugin has moved to http://www.viplugin.com

Answer 2

IMHO, the built-in vim tutorial is a very good start. I started from there and got used to the basic key bindings for several hours. After that, it is a matter of experience and ongoing training in online articles, blogs, browsing, etc. And, ultimately, a built-in help command.

Answer 3

Some of my bookmarks are:

• http://www.viemu.com/a-why-vi-vim.html (learned some things that I did not know about, very good)
• http://www.viemu.com/a_vi_vim_graphical_cheat_sheet_tutorial.html
• http://www.tuxfiles.org/linuxhelp/vimcheat.html
• http://www.linux.com/articles/55316

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Answer 4

As someone who has been using vi / vim for most of two decades and who is still doing a lot of things, I can tell you that as soon as I “received” Eclipse, I never returned to using vi / vim for a non-trivial job Java Although there are still a few things that vi / vim do in such a way that I find it more natural and productive (possibly due to many years of use in my brain), the refactoring and unit testing capabilities of modern IDEs (including Eclipse, IntelliJ and NetBeans) more than compensate for the loss of " / ", " n ", " n ", " . ", " s/// " and their cousins, (And yes, after an intense cross-platform / cross-language session, I sometimes I find that my fingers are directed to " j " instead of the down arrow .-)

I still think that command line and shell scripts are great tools for some tasks (just like I think there are words on a page on real books, not photos of Dick, Jane and Spot ;-), and I also that every real programmer should have vi or emacs skills (or TECO , really be a real programmer ;-) .

Your question implies that you do not know vi / vim yet, which is still good, and I urge you to show interest. Two good sources: Learning the vi and Vim editors and the VI Pocket Reference Editor . By all means, learn about vi / vim and have fun, but I respectfully suggest that they probably will not supersede the good IDE as the main Java programming environment.

Answer 5

Any specific reason for this other than ardent desire to try vim? I'm not trying to stop you, just curious.

It may be easier to go through this (or similar) Eclipse plugin . This way, you will learn a lot of key bindings before starting a real VIM, and you won’t even be able to figure out how to edit or delete text.

I am not a vim expert, as I only use it to edit the system configuration on old linux / solaris servers, but are you really sure you want to do this? Eclipse offers LOTS of very useful tools that either do not exist or require scripting / vim configuration. Eclipse has very good refactoring support, syntax-based searches, and built-in Ant support to name just a few features.

vim Experts: Can vim refactor Java code? Can vim shell / run things?

Answer 6

There are a number of good articles on the Vincent Liu blog.

You can also try Eclim , which will add some of Eclipse's more advanced features to Vim.

You must go through the online tutorial in Vim first if you have not already done so. This is usually related to Vim as a program called "vimtutor". This will help you understand the basics of Vim before you begin to develop it.

Answer 7

Learning the vi editor is a good book.

I learned most of my vi editing skills from this book, highly recommended. It does not show you the way from Eclipse to VIM, but it is a very good book to start with. It has nice chapters to help you get started with the base vi editor, and in the end, it has 1 chapter on VIM.

If you want to use it for your Java project, you should look more in cscope with VIM for Java .

Answer 8

As I said, I suggest you start enjoying Vim by following the basic tutorial ( vimtutor ) that brought me to the first world of Vim.

I personally use Eclipse over Vim to develop Java, but there are a few more ways that I have been able to improve the configuration of Vim for quick Java editing:

• There are a large number of plugins available for Vim that are good for Java development. One of them is Vim JDE , which brings IDE functions to Vim.
• Definitely look in this article about Configuring vi for Java Development .

Answer 9

viemu is good for you using eclipse functions in vim But I would recommend vrapper . For non-vim-heavy-user, it provides an easy-to-use Eclipse Vim input scheme. If you try the intellij idea, I recommend ideavim.

Answer 10

Do not get involved in learning Vim; try a simple intro tutorial and see how you go (here is a decent one that I used: http://www-acs.ucsd.edu/info/vi_tutorial.shtml ).

Most Vim users do not fall into complex material - just keeping it simple is all you need ...