File Manager tab in vim

Question

I'm very close to figuring this out, but can't seem to find the missing piece.

I have a pretty good vim set up for development. When doing MVC projects, I need multiple tabs open, and I've gotten pretty good at shifting between them and rearranging quickly.

I can even open a vertical tab with an interactive directory listing of my files.

What I really want and can't figure out:

1. To be able to have this vertical tab persistent, that is, in the "foreground" of all tabs, and allow me open a file into a new tab. (Basically, I want vim to have a sidepane that is a file manager and when i press enter on a selected file in the directory, it will open a new tab, but the "file manager/directory tab" will stay open, and in front.

2. To set the persistent "file manager/directory tab" to be a specific width - ie :vsplit 32(pixels?)

Does that make sense? Can anyone point me to the right part of the help section for this?

Thanks, Kevin

Answer 1

Are you using NERDTree? If not, it might be the answer to your prayers.

You can set the width of the NERDTree window by putting this in your .vimrc:

let g:NERDTreeWinSize=32