Shell commands from vim

Question

What is the best approach of using shell commands from vim? I know about the possibility of !shell_command. But this doesn't know all commands e.g. export OSTYPE; make install So I have to run it outside vim. Is there better approach?

Answer 1

I know this is a bit late, but my preferred approach is suspending the vim process (Ctrl+z). You return to your shell/bash command prompt.

Then execute whatever command(s) you like.

Return to vim by typing fg