My Pythony Puppet Ruby vim IDE

Chris Cowley

September 13, 2014 - 4 minutes read - 774 words

Despite my penchant for tools written in Ruby (Puppet, Gitlab, Jekyll/Octopress etc) I do not actually like Ruby. I am more of a Python guy. I also like Vim, so whenever I use a GUI IDE I end up with something littered with :w and ZZ.

Despite my pythonic leanings, I also need something that can handle Ruby and Puppet’s DSL. To which end, this is a bit of a mixture. Fortunately, nothing in either world really contradicts the other, so it works pretty nicely.

First, the basic environments. Git is needed everywhere, plus I need to isolate the environments of the various projects.

sudo apt install git python python-dev python-virtualenv \
    virtualenvwrapper curl libxml2-dev libxslt-dev zlib1g-dev ruby-dev
echo "pip install pyflakes" >> ~/.virtualenvs/postmkvirtualenv
curl -sSL https://get.rvm.io | bash -s stable --ruby

Now we have Git, Virtualenv (and virtualenvwrapper) and RVM installed.

Vim

This the core of everything. I use quite a few plugins:

Autoclose: Inserts matching bracket, paren, brace or quote
Colour Sampler Pack: Gives me a nice colour scheme
Gundo: Visualise the undo tree
Lusty: Manage files within Vim
PEP-8: Validate the style of Python files
PyDoc: Python documentation view- and search-tool (uses pydoc)
Pathogen: Plugin Manager
Scroll Colours: Colorsheme Scroller, Chooser, and Browser
Supertab: Tab completion
VirtualEnv: Works with Virtualenvs
Vim Puppet: Puppet niceties
Tabular: Text filtering and alignment
Markdown: Markdown syntax highlighter with snippets support

I keep all this under Git control (available here). You can just clone my repo and create a symlink for your .vimrc. If you would rather see what you are doing, then you can replicate my set up like this:

mkdir -p ${HOME}/.vim/{autoload,bundle}
cd ${HOME}/.vim/
git init
git submodule add https://github.com/andrewle/vim-autoclose.git bundle/vim-autoclose
git submodule add https://github.com/vim-scripts/Colour-Sampler-Pack.git bundle/colour-sampler-pack
git submodule add https://github.com/sjl/gundo.vim.git bundle/gundo
git submodule add https://github.com/sjbach/lusty.git bundle/lusty
git submodule add https://github.com/cburroughs/pep8.git bundle/pep8
git submodule add https://github.com/vim-scripts/pydoc.vim.git bundle/pydoc
git submodule add https://github.com/tpope/vim-pathogen.git bundle/pathogen
git submodule add https://github.com/vim-scripts/ScrollColors.git bundle/scrollColors
git submodule add https://github.com/ervandew/supertab.git bundle/supertab
git submodule add https://github.com/jmcantrell/vim-virtualenv.git bundle/vim-virtualenv
git submodule add https://github.com/rodjek/vim-puppet.git bundle/puppet
git submodule add https://github.com/godlygeek/tabular.git bundle/tabular
git submodule add https://github.com/hallison/vim-markdown.git bundle/markdown
git submodule init
git submodule update
git submodule foreach git submodule init
git submodule foreach git submodule update
ln -s ../bundle/pathogen/autoload/pathogen.vim autoload/pathogen.vim
mv $HOME/.vimrc .
ln -s '$HOME/.vim/.vimrc' $HOME/.vimrc

Add the following to your .vimrc:

" pathogen
let g:pathogen_disabled = [ 'pathogen' ]    " don't load self
call pathogen#infect()                      " load everyhting else
call pathogen#helptags()                    " load plugin help files

" code folding
set foldmethod=indent
set foldlevel=2
set foldnestmax=4

" indentation
set autoindent
set softtabstop=4 shiftwidth=4 expandtab

" visual
highlight Normal ctermbg=black
set background=dark
set cursorline
set t_Co=256

" syntax highlighting
syntax on
filetype on                 " enables filetype detection
filetype plugin indent on   " enables filetype specific plugins

" colorpack
colorscheme vibrantink

" gundo
nnoremap <F5> :GundoToggle<CR>

" lusty
set hidden
let g:LustyJugglerSuppressRubyWarning = 1"

" pep8
let g:pep8_map='<leader>8'

" supertab
au FileType python set omnifunc=pythoncomplete#Complete
let g:SuperTabDefaultCompletionType = "context"
set completeopt=menuone,longest,preview

There’s quite a lot going on there. Refer to the various plugin docs linked above to find what it all does. This would be a good moment to commit all that.

git add .
git commit -m "Initial commit"

Tmux

I use this so I can have a single console window, with multiple panes. Tmux is configured with the file $HOME/.tmux.conf, mine contains:

set-window-option -g mode-keys vi
bind h select-pane -L
bind j select-pane -D
bind k select-pane -U
bind l select-pane -R
unbind -n C-b
set -g prefix C-a

# easy-to-remember split pane commands
bind h split-window -h
bind v split-window -v
unbind '"'
unbind %

bind -n M-Left select-pane -L
bind -n M-Right select-pane -R
bind -n M-Up select-pane -U
bind -n M-Down select-pane -D
set-window-option -g window-status-current-bg yellow

# Just click it
set-option -g mouse-select-pane on
set-option -g mouse-select-window on
set-option -g mouse-resize-pane on

# Scroll your way into copy mode (scrollback buffer)
# and select text for copying with the mouse
setw -g mode-mouse on

set -g set-titles on
set -g set-titles-string "#T"

Now I can use Ctrl+a instead of Ctrl+b. You may not need to do this, but I have little hands.I also change the kes for splitting my windows (‘h’ horizontally, v vertically). I make a few changes from the defaults:

Ctrl+a instead of Ctrl+b is my prefix. This matches screen, plusI am more comfortable as I have small hands.
I can move around panes with either vi keys, arrows or just with the mouse.
I change the keys to split windows to h (horizontal) and v (vertical).

This all works pretty well for me, although not perfectly. At the moment my clipboard gets intercepted by Tmux,which is top of my my list to fix.