I want to know always enjoy the ability to open a Bash instance within Emacs. Does vim have this functionality besides the ability to run commands with :!command?
Conque and Vimshell are very limited, you might as well use :shell which is very reliable if you use Vim in a terminal.
conque
https://code.google.com/p/conque/
conque is terminal emuration.
vimshell
https://github.com/Shougo/vimshell
vimshell is shell implement in vim.
Related
Steps to reproduce this:
open emacs
M-x shell RET
vi tmpfile RET
Then you'll see the vi interface is a mess. To quit this, try to blind input :q! or just close the shell buffer.
The reason I use "vi" within emacs is that I use emacs shell-mode heavily and sometimes I ssh to another host within it. On the remote host, i have a reason to use "vi" when i need to edit some file and emacs is absent there.
Your help is appreciated.
I strongly suspect that a proper terminal emulator is necessary for anything like that.
Emacs has one, happily. Try running M-x ansi-term. You can run a shell within that (the default option) and then ssh to the remote host as you were in shell mode.
(If you didn't need to change hosts then you could run vi directly, instead of a shell.)
You might also find Remote ssh connection from within Emacs useful.
You will undoubtedly want to stick to char-mode in the terminal when using vi.
See: C-hig (emacs) Terminal emulator RET
I have muscle memory of the vi/vim commands. So in bash, I use the vi mode,
for example, I can easily go back to my command history and re-edit previous commands.
Are vi shortcuts available with pry or irb? If so, how do I set it up?
Thank you.
Not sure about re-editing previous commands, but you could use interactive editor gem to start vim-like editing from inside of your irb. Using that, you can start irb, edit your script in vim and let ruby shell execute it immediately. Here is a great tutorial on this: Running Vim within IRB.
What is the best approach of using shell commands from vim? I know about the possibility of !shell_command. But this doesn't know all commands e.g.
export OSTYPE; make install So I have to run it outside vim. Is there better approach?
I know this is a bit late, but my preferred approach is suspending the vim process (Ctrl+z). You return to your shell/bash command prompt.
Then execute whatever command(s) you like.
Return to vim by typing fg
You can start a shell from Vim using the :sh command. When the shell exits
(after the exit command or Ctrl+D) you return to Vim. The name for the shell command comes from the shell option.
For terminal Vim (on unix-like systems) you can also use Ctrl+Z to suspend Vim and get back to the shell from which it was run. To resume the Vim process, use the fg command.
Often I find my self navigating the filesystem from a Conque shell in Vim and want to open a specific file inside my existing MacVim session. Is this possible ? - I was hoping for something like:
shell> open some/file.txt
and then have file.txt pop up inside my existing Vim window (preferably in a new tab).
Note: I am using #wycats vim dot files (not sure this matters).
Type from ConqueShell
mvim --remote-tab-silent filename
This will open the file in a new tab in MacVim
You could also write a Bash alias to shorten the command (assuming you are using bash).
Put in your ~/.profile
alias vim='mvim --remote-tab-silent'
this would enable you to type
vim filename
from ConqueShell or bash, and have it open in a new MacVim tab, rather than terminal vim. It of course does disable your ability to run standard vim (although you could still use the vi command), so maybe you would want to name the alias differently.
Just to add, this will work only if you placed the mvim executable on your path E.G. /usr/bin/mvim. It comes with the MacVim.app
Often I find my self navigating the filesystem from a Conque shell
The beauty of running a shell from inside vim is you have all of vim and the shell at your disposal.
gf is your friend. Once you get the file you want displayed on the screen in some way, you can enter normal mode, move the cursor to the file you want to edit, then use the gf command to navigate to the file. There are many ways to use this. Any program or command that outputs file names is great for this (ll, git status, etc). You could also type the filename into the shell, just to make it visible on the screen without actually running any terminal commands (tab completion is handy here).
It is possible, you can start vim as server and then add as many files as you want, but I'm not very familiar with this, so I can't give you just a direction.
i'm on a Windows 7 machine and i've installed Gvim(win32 version not MinGW or something alike), i've written in my _vimrc
set shell=powershell.exe
Now when i type :shell command it must open a new buffer with powershell in it but instead it opens powershell in a new window.
Question : Is there a way to set Gvim ( configuration or plugin ) to open PowerShell in a buffer (like bash)?
Reread documentation for :shell and design-not. Quote from design-not:
Vim is not a shell or an Operating System. You will not be able to run a
shell inside Vim or use it to control a debugger. This should work the
other way around: Use Vim as a component from a shell or in an IDE.
A satirical way to say this: "Unlike Emacs, Vim does not attempt to include
everything but the kitchen sink, but some people say that you can clean one
with it. ;-)"
Of course, somebody does not like this. There are some projects that make it possible to run shell inside vim, most known is Conque which now has windows support. Note that it does not work with unicode.