How can I enable VIM for mac in Visual Studio?

Question

I just got Visual Studio for my Mac. Although in Beta, it seems nice. Unfortunately, I can't seem to figure out where VIM could be. I've searched the marketplace, but cannot load any file or extension into the IDE to enable VIM. I've checked the preferences in keyboard behavior, but nothing.

Does this IDE really not have one of the most essential tools?

Answer 1

Use VsVim with Visual Studio for Mac 8.4 or newer.

Original Answer

Shameless plug - Use my plugin :) https://github.com/nosami/XSVim/releases

It's now available in the Visual Studio for Mac extension gallery (under IDE extensions)

You can usually find a more recent version on the github releases page than in the VS for Mac addin gallery.

Answer 2

Visual Studio for Mac is not a direct port of Visual Studio for Windows. It's essentially an alpha-level rebranding (with a lot of work put into it but still) of another IDE called Xamarin Studio, itself essentially a rebranding of MonoDevelop.

As such, you shouldn't expect any compatibility with other tools in the Visual Studio ecosystem for the time being.

However, you can set up MacVim as an external tool if you really want, but you won't get any kind of integration per se:

Answer 3

What worked for me was downloading VsVim addin as *.mpack file from this page: https://addins.monodevelop.com/Project/Index/403. In my case the file was named Vim.Mac.VsVim-2.8.0.7.mpack.

After downloading the file, I opened Visual Studio for Mac, selected Visual Studio - Extensions from the menu to open the Extension Manager pop-up window, clicked Install from file... button and selected the downloaded *.mpack file.

Needed to restart Visual Studio to get the extension to work.

This was done in Visual Studio for Mac 8.7.8.