There are two things that make using vim awesome… no there are about 200,000 but most of them involve adding a few lines to your .vimrc to enable them, or installing a plugin. My .vimrc is just over 300 lines after all these years of use and customization. But, rather than go into all that, I figured some of the vim geeks out there might appreciate a pointer to some of the plugins I use. I’d also be happy to hear suggestions any alternatives to the ones I am running.

I should note that some of these rely on the use of ctags which seems to be a dying art these days. So many people are unaware of the awesomeness contained therein. If you don’t know about ctags, go read this.

Vim Plugins I use

• AutoComplPop (acp) Autocomplete popup. It’s a little too aggressive. I need to find something that’s mare accepting of me not wanting what it’s offering.
• AutoTag Automatically reruns ctags on a source file when you save it.
• bclose Deletes a buffer without closing the window.
• bufexplorer allows you to quickly and easily switch between buffers
• FuzzyFinder (fuf) allows you to search for a file by name or via ctags… has a tendency to totally hang vim far too often.
• indent_guides visually displays indent levels in code. I don’t use it much, but it’s nice to have sometimes.
• powerline makes the vim statusline awesome. For extra awesome install the modded font.
• rails I have never used this, although I probably should.
• Fugitive Install this, if for no other reason than to have awesome Git Blame integration
• taglist I never use this but really ought to. There’s a video on it here
• gitgutter Puts a little indication of what lines have been added, modified, or deleted in the left hand gutter. Read the FAQ after install if gutter section for non-modified lines looks ugly.

Plugins I’ve installed but should probably get rid of

• scratch I’ve never used this.
• vcscommand for interacting with version control systems. I should probably kill this as there are better ones that are git specific like…
• gitv gitk for vim… I can’t remember using this and I’ve got Kaleidoscope and SourceTree which are awesome so I don’t really need it.
• l9 I have no clue why I installed this, and I’m somewhat unclear on what it does (documentation sucks).