clang-format not working under gVim

Question

I installed clang-format-3.8 via apt-get. Now I try to use it in gVim, but it is not working. I checked and clang-format-3.8 exists in the folder /usr/share/vim/addons/syntax.

But when I enter :pyf /usr/share/vim/addons/syntax/clang-format-3.8.py in my vim command line, it returns:

E319: Sorry, the command is not available in this version.

I use gVim 7.4 under Ubuntu 16.04.

Answer 1

Dahn's answer is correct that the Vim binary that ships with Ubuntu 16.04 is compiled with Python 3 rather than Python 2. The clang-format-3.8.py script in the Ubuntu 16.04 clang-format-3.8 package is not compatible with Python 3.

But the latest clang-format.py does work with Python 3. You can get it here:

https://llvm.org/svn/llvm-project/cfe/trunk/tools/clang-format/clang-format.py

I think it was just a matter of putting parentheses around the print statements.

Save this file somewhere on your computer such as /usr/local/share/vim/addons/syntax/.

This script uses clang-format as the binary name, so you'll want to install the clang-format package, which installs the clang-format command as a symlink to clang-format-3.8.

Since Vim is now loading a Python 3 script, replace your :pyf (not available) command with :py3f:

:py3f /usr/local/share/vim/addons/syntax/clang-format.py

Answer 2

The Vim binary shipped with Ubuntu 16.04 is compiled with Python 3. The vim addons of clang-format is written by Python 2.

You need to either:

• write your own addon by Python 3
• Compile your own vim with Python 2, which is the easiest way

The instructions to build vim with Python can be found by Google.

Answer 3

In addition to the above answers I had to do a few more things. I downloaded a new python file and changed the key mapping recommended by in the clang python file to the following in my .vimrc:

    map <C-I> :py3file <path-to-this-file>/clang-format.py<cr>
    imap <C-I> <c-o>:py3file <path-to-this-file>/clang-format.py<cr>

This solved the E319 problem I was getting.