Vim

Tricks

• Reload .vimrc without restarting vim:

  :so ~/.vimrc
  :so $MYVIMRC
  :so %
  

: The last command is for when you’re editing it.

Package management

Vundle FTW.

" Required Vundle stuff
set rtp+=~/.vim/bundle/Vundle.vim
call vundle#begin()
Plugin 'gmarik/Vundle.vim'

" Plugins
Plugin 'airblade/vim-gitgutter'
Plugin 'scrooloose/nerdtree'
Plugin 'chriskempson/base16-vim'
Plugin 'bling/vim-airline'
Plugin 'tpope/vim-fugitive'
Plugin 'jmcantrell/vim-virtualenv'
Plugin 'bling/vim-bufferline'

" End Vundle stuff
call vundle#end()
filetype plugin indent on

Color Schemes

iTerm2, Base16 theme on OS X. Need do three things:

• Install relevant iTerm2
  theme
• Set up the Base16
  shell in ~/.profile
• Install Base16 vim
  themes (done
  via Vundle)

Then,

let base16colorspace=256
let g:airline_theme='base16'
colorscheme base16-railscasts

vim-airline

To get all the nice arrows and symbols in vim-airline, you’ll either have to

• Patch your terminal
  font, or
• Download a pre-patched
  one¹

If you just want the symbols, see this. This guy has some great observations on the amount of effort necessary to get a simple status bar. You can always use Sublime Text.

I stopped caring (see source)

let g:airline_left_sep = ''
let g:airline_right_sep = ''
let g:airline_symbols.linenr = ''
let g:airline_symbols.branch = ''
let g:airline_symbols.paste = ''
let g:airline_symbols.whitespace = ''

Themes

Here’s a list of included themes. Find one and set it in .vimrc with

let g:airline_theme = 'base16'

Customization

let g:airline_section_a       (mode, paste, iminsert)
let g:airline_section_b       (hunks, branch)
let g:airline_section_c       (bufferline or filename)
let g:airline_section_gutter  (readonly, csv)
let g:airline_section_x       (tagbar, filetype, virtualenv)
let g:airline_section_y       (fileencoding, fileformat)
let g:airline_section_z       (percentage, line number, column number)
let g:airline_section_warning (syntastic, whitespace)

References etc

• Look for Unicode symbols

• Add this to ~/.vimrc to see the airline bar (source)

  set laststatus=2
  

• Vivify is a nice theme-making GUI.
  Villustrator is another.

• You can also make your own
  Base16 theme.

• Some good notes on a
  basic Vim setup.

Footnotes