Tips for using Vim as a Java IDE

Question

I m addicted to Vim  it s now my de facto way of editing text files   Being that it s mainly a text editor and not an IDE  has anyone got tricks for me to make it easier when developing Java apps   Some questions I have    How do I invoke a maven task without leaving vi  Can I get code completion  How s the syntax highlighting    Anything else  other than  Don t do it    that I should know about

User · Accepted Answer

Some tips    Make sure you use vim  vi improved   Linux and some versions of UNIX symlink vi to vim  You can get code completion with eclim Or you can get vi functionality within Eclipse with viPlugin Syntax highlighting is great with vim Vim has good support for writing little macros like running ant maven builds   Have fun  -

User · Answer

Use vim   -   gVim  to be precise   You ll have it all  with some plugins    Btw  snippetsEmu is a nice tool for coding with useful snippets  like in TextMate   You can use  or modify  a pre-made package or make your own

User · Answer

I have just uploaded this Vim plugin for the development of Java Maven projects   And don t forget to set the highlighting if you haven t already    https   github com sentientmachine erics vim syntax and color highlighting

User · Answer

Use vim   -   gVim  to be precise   You ll have it all  with some plugins    Btw  snippetsEmu is a nice tool for coding with useful snippets  like in TextMate   You can use  or modify  a pre-made package or make your own

User · Answer

I ve been a Vim user for years   I m starting to find myself starting up Eclipse occasionally  using the vi plugin  which  I have to say  has a variety of issues    The main reason is that Java builds take quite a while   and they are just getting slower and slower with the addition of highly componentized build-frameworks like maven   So validating your changes tends to take quite a while  which for me seems to often lead to stacking up a bunch of compile issues I have to resolve later  and filtering through the commit messages takes a while   When I get too big of a queue of compile issues  I fire up Eclipse   It lets me make cake-work of the changes   It s slow  brutal to use  and not nearly as nice of an editor as Vim is  I ve been using Vim for nearly a decade  so it s second nature to me    I find for precision editing mdash needing to fix a specific bug  needing to refactor some specific bit of logic  or something else   I simply can t be as efficient at editing in Eclipse as I can in Vim   Also a tip    set path     chdir your project root   This makes  wf on a classname a very nice feature for navigating a large project   So anyway  the skinny is  when I need to add a lot of new code  Vim seems to slow me down simply due to the time spent chasing down compilation issues and similar stuff   When I need to find and edit specific sources  though  Eclipse feels like a sledge hammer   I m still waiting for the magical IDE for Vim   There s been three major attempts I know of   There s a pure viml IDE-type plugin which adds a lot of features but seems impossible to use   There s eclim  which I ve had a lot of trouble with   And there s a plugin for Eclipse which actually embeds Vim   The last one seems the most promising for real serious Java EE work  but it doesn t seem to work very well or really integrate all of Eclipse s features with the embedded Vim   Things like add a missing import with a keystroke  hilight code with typing issues  etc  seems to be invaluable from your IDE when working on a large Java project

User · Answer

I found the following summary very useful  http   www techrepublic com article configure-vi-for-java-application-development 5054618  The description of  make was for ant not maven  but otherwise a nice summary

User · Answer

I know this is quite a few years later but here are some interesting plugins   I have not tried either of these yet so YMMV   https   github com mikelue vim-maven-plugin  https   github com vim-scripts maven-ide  EDIT   Oh an BTW  i ve tried eclim off and on  but the reason I like vim is its lightness   Executing eclipse even on headless mode is just too much mental lifting for me   EDIT2   I ve been using playframework lately and this will probably work with maven builds too    For compiling  you can configure VIM s make to run maven or in my case  run a build script  tee that to a file   autocmd Filetype java setl makeprg play compile autocmd Filetype java setl efm  A     error    f  l    m  -Z     error    p   -C         play compile  is just a compile script   It uses SBT so Maven should work just fine here   Even direct javac will work   This way  you can use VIM s quickfix buffer   cnext   clist  cprev  etc     For jumping around the classes  I use ctrl-p   Its beautiful   Use it   Faster than eclipse in jumping around files  For jumping around methods  I use tagsearch with exuberant c-tags   Jump into method declarations by using ctrl-    Go back    using Ctrl-o   Doesnt work as good as eclipse  but it works good enough  I use supertab for code completion   Javacomplete is pretty slow  so I stick  with omni-complete   Again  not as accurate as eclipse  but its fast and works good enough for me

User · Answer

Use vim   -   gVim  to be precise   You ll have it all  with some plugins    Btw  snippetsEmu is a nice tool for coding with useful snippets  like in TextMate   You can use  or modify  a pre-made package or make your own

User · Answer

I ve been a Vim user for years   I m starting to find myself starting up Eclipse occasionally  using the vi plugin  which  I have to say  has a variety of issues    The main reason is that Java builds take quite a while   and they are just getting slower and slower with the addition of highly componentized build-frameworks like maven   So validating your changes tends to take quite a while  which for me seems to often lead to stacking up a bunch of compile issues I have to resolve later  and filtering through the commit messages takes a while   When I get too big of a queue of compile issues  I fire up Eclipse   It lets me make cake-work of the changes   It s slow  brutal to use  and not nearly as nice of an editor as Vim is  I ve been using Vim for nearly a decade  so it s second nature to me    I find for precision editing mdash needing to fix a specific bug  needing to refactor some specific bit of logic  or something else   I simply can t be as efficient at editing in Eclipse as I can in Vim   Also a tip    set path     chdir your project root   This makes  wf on a classname a very nice feature for navigating a large project   So anyway  the skinny is  when I need to add a lot of new code  Vim seems to slow me down simply due to the time spent chasing down compilation issues and similar stuff   When I need to find and edit specific sources  though  Eclipse feels like a sledge hammer   I m still waiting for the magical IDE for Vim   There s been three major attempts I know of   There s a pure viml IDE-type plugin which adds a lot of features but seems impossible to use   There s eclim  which I ve had a lot of trouble with   And there s a plugin for Eclipse which actually embeds Vim   The last one seems the most promising for real serious Java EE work  but it doesn t seem to work very well or really integrate all of Eclipse s features with the embedded Vim   Things like add a missing import with a keystroke  hilight code with typing issues  etc  seems to be invaluable from your IDE when working on a large Java project

User · Answer

I have just uploaded this Vim plugin for the development of Java Maven projects   And don t forget to set the highlighting if you haven t already    https   github com sentientmachine erics vim syntax and color highlighting

User · Answer

I found the following summary very useful  http   www techrepublic com article configure-vi-for-java-application-development 5054618  The description of  make was for ant not maven  but otherwise a nice summary

User · Answer

Use vim   -   gVim  to be precise   You ll have it all  with some plugins    Btw  snippetsEmu is a nice tool for coding with useful snippets  like in TextMate   You can use  or modify  a pre-made package or make your own

User · Answer

How do I invoke a maven task without leaving vi   Maven is no different than any other shell command     mvn  You can  set makeprg mvn if you already have a favourite key mapping for  make  Can I get code completion   Yes  eclim is great  a bridge between vim s editing efficiency and Eclipse s Java language-specific awareness    lt C-n gt  and  lt C-p gt  are not-so-great  but amazingly helpful  How s the syntax highlighting   More than good enough for a regex-based highligher    You may want to consider tools for other vim java purposes  like code templates  snippetEmu mdash default snippets suck  but customizability shines   searching for usages and going to declarations  eclim  grep  ctags   generating getters and setters  java getset  or eclim   automatic imports  eclim    You might also need a java shell for quick experiments  the BeanShell  a k a  bsh

User · Answer

How do I invoke a maven task without leaving vi   Maven is no different than any other shell command     mvn  You can  set makeprg mvn if you already have a favourite key mapping for  make  Can I get code completion   Yes  eclim is great  a bridge between vim s editing efficiency and Eclipse s Java language-specific awareness    lt C-n gt  and  lt C-p gt  are not-so-great  but amazingly helpful  How s the syntax highlighting   More than good enough for a regex-based highligher    You may want to consider tools for other vim java purposes  like code templates  snippetEmu mdash default snippets suck  but customizability shines   searching for usages and going to declarations  eclim  grep  ctags   generating getters and setters  java getset  or eclim   automatic imports  eclim    You might also need a java shell for quick experiments  the BeanShell  a k a  bsh

User · Answer

I know this is quite a few years later but here are some interesting plugins   I have not tried either of these yet so YMMV   https   github com mikelue vim-maven-plugin  https   github com vim-scripts maven-ide  EDIT   Oh an BTW  i ve tried eclim off and on  but the reason I like vim is its lightness   Executing eclipse even on headless mode is just too much mental lifting for me   EDIT2   I ve been using playframework lately and this will probably work with maven builds too    For compiling  you can configure VIM s make to run maven or in my case  run a build script  tee that to a file   autocmd Filetype java setl makeprg play compile autocmd Filetype java setl efm  A     error    f  l    m  -Z     error    p   -C         play compile  is just a compile script   It uses SBT so Maven should work just fine here   Even direct javac will work   This way  you can use VIM s quickfix buffer   cnext   clist  cprev  etc     For jumping around the classes  I use ctrl-p   Its beautiful   Use it   Faster than eclipse in jumping around files  For jumping around methods  I use tagsearch with exuberant c-tags   Jump into method declarations by using ctrl-    Go back    using Ctrl-o   Doesnt work as good as eclipse  but it works good enough  I use supertab for code completion   Javacomplete is pretty slow  so I stick  with omni-complete   Again  not as accurate as eclipse  but its fast and works good enough for me

User · Answer

How do I invoke a maven task without leaving vi   Maven is no different than any other shell command     mvn  You can  set makeprg mvn if you already have a favourite key mapping for  make  Can I get code completion   Yes  eclim is great  a bridge between vim s editing efficiency and Eclipse s Java language-specific awareness    lt C-n gt  and  lt C-p gt  are not-so-great  but amazingly helpful  How s the syntax highlighting   More than good enough for a regex-based highligher    You may want to consider tools for other vim java purposes  like code templates  snippetEmu mdash default snippets suck  but customizability shines   searching for usages and going to declarations  eclim  grep  ctags   generating getters and setters  java getset  or eclim   automatic imports  eclim    You might also need a java shell for quick experiments  the BeanShell  a k a  bsh

User · Answer

How do I invoke a maven task without leaving vi   Maven is no different than any other shell command     mvn  You can  set makeprg mvn if you already have a favourite key mapping for  make  Can I get code completion   Yes  eclim is great  a bridge between vim s editing efficiency and Eclipse s Java language-specific awareness    lt C-n gt  and  lt C-p gt  are not-so-great  but amazingly helpful  How s the syntax highlighting   More than good enough for a regex-based highligher    You may want to consider tools for other vim java purposes  like code templates  snippetEmu mdash default snippets suck  but customizability shines   searching for usages and going to declarations  eclim  grep  ctags   generating getters and setters  java getset  or eclim   automatic imports  eclim    You might also need a java shell for quick experiments  the BeanShell  a k a  bsh

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