Integrating Vim with MonoDevelop

Posted by ankitj on June 30, 2007

This week was Hack Week at Novell. My idea for the hack week was to Integrate Vim with MonoDevelop. Not just as an external editor used by MD to open files, but integration, so MD should be aware of changes being done via vim and vim should respond to various commands from MD.

Current implementation status is that you can see gvim in monodevelop, i have two way communication mostly setup. The class and method combos above the editor respond to cursor changes in vim, and selecting a class/method from the combos makes vim jump to the correct position. It supports code completion (yay!). Vim gets the code completion info from monodevelop.

But there are problems. Vim has some bugs which hinder some stuff, so next I’ll try to fix those bugs in vim. Its not really distributable right now, but it should be soon. I’m not sure whether a lot of people would be interested in this or what all features would be desirable, so feel free to give feedback. Here is a small demo of what is available right now:

This is just a quick post, I’ll post one with more details soon. If you like the project then please vote here.

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  1. Ruben Guinez Sat, 30 Jun 2007 22:29:42 UTC

    I think about this project that it is a great idea, and it may be used by a many programmers that have a lot time with vi. Good job!.

  2. Daedius Sat, 30 Jun 2007 22:32:16 UTC

    Great idea! I’m a vim lover myself, and I am sometimes lost with indecision what to do with a great app like monodevelop. C# vim? =P Hope you find your answers.

  3. Matt Mon, 02 Jul 2007 01:15:27 UTC

    Fantastic idea. If you end up hacking at vim to fix those bugs, I’m sure Bram will willingly accept the improvements.

  4. knipknap Fri, 06 Jul 2007 21:49:17 UTC

    Cool, I can’t wait to try this out! Does it support Vim’s :vs command? I totally miss vertical windows in MonoDevelop.

  5. thebeast22 Tue, 17 Jul 2007 21:19:06 UTC

    hi,

    How i can get your latest monodevelop version from SVN?

    svn://svn.myrealbox.com/source/trunk/monodevelop gave me an unknown hostname error.

    Thanks,

    Newbie with SVN and Mono

  6. ankitj Mon, 23 Jul 2007 00:59:05 UTC

    thebeast22, the url has changed to - svn://anonsvn.mono-project.com/source/trunk/monodevelop

  7. thebeast22 Wed, 25 Jul 2007 17:20:01 UTC

    thx

  8. Nathan Thu, 09 Aug 2007 06:08:27 UTC

    Please keep working on this; lack of Vim compatibility is what keeps me away from IDEs.

  9. efleming969 Sat, 11 Aug 2007 21:15:34 UTC

    I’m also very interested in this add-in. Looking forward to trying it out

  10. ARGH@gmail.com Mon, 13 Aug 2007 23:22:07 UTC

    this is a great idea, there is a huge vim community out there, and definitely want more than syntax highlighting / make file integration…

  11. Zak Fri, 08 Feb 2008 23:46:26 UTC

    What’s the status of this? Are you going to get to do more for “Hack Week Two”? That would be great, since I am constantly wanting to use vim commands when I am in Monodevelop.

  12. Michael Mon, 17 Mar 2008 11:03:59 UTC

    Nice work. This combo of VIM and monodevelop is what im looking for for years!

  13. lambda Fri, 21 Mar 2008 13:36:36 UTC

    any progress on this… or is the code accessible anywhere yet? :)

  14. N Wed, 09 Apr 2008 19:39:21 UTC

    Any hope for further work on this? It’s something I’ve been after for a long, long time, and the nearest competition (netbeans with jvi) really just doesn’t do it.

    Also, I’d be willing to put in some time to help make this succeed if you are up for some assistance.

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