Getting started with macvim, how to manage a project?

Question

I have started out with macvim and now fairly comfortable with the navigation (on a single file) and now I need to write a whole project (say rails) using mvim.

In textmate, you have mate project_dir which opens the project in a side drawer, so my question is:

1. Is there a similar feature in mvim?
2. How can a complete project managed in traditionally in macvim?

Links to some write-ups are welcomed.

Answer 1

Just try using Janus. Made it really easy for me to switch from TextMate.

Answer 2

As @changelog pointed out, the absolute best way to get MacVim to behave like Textmate is to use Janus. Janus packages up a bunch of popular plugins and provides an easy way to keep those pluggins up-to-date via a rakefile. Janus also includes NERDTree (mentioned by @zengr) along with a variety of other tools that make it really easy to manage a big project.

In order to launch mvim the way that you launch textmate with mate project_dir, an mvim script is included in the MacVim download. You just need to put it in your path (I keep mine in /usr/local/bin/mvim). Using this script you can do the exact same thing:

mvim project_dir - to open a specific directory in MacVim

mvim . or just mvim - to open your current directory in MacVim

Answer 3

After trying out many plugins, NERDTree was the best match. Read more

Answer 4

PROJECT is really awesome. You can easily add folders to your project (single ones, or recursively), specify filters, etc.

It's really worth a try.

Answer 5

Try :help mksession.

Load all your 'project' files (either interactively or using the command line vim file1 file2 ....) Running :mksession xxx writes a vim script to restore the environment and load all currently loaded files.

Next time just :source xxx to reload your environment (or run vim -s xxx to execute the file on startup).

Note: For navigating source files (as opposed to data files), ctags is, in my opinion, a better option. Create a ctags database (ctags works for Ruby scripts too!) and navigate in your code tree using :tag myfunc. No need to preload any file.