Using Vim instead of (or with) Xcode for iOS development

Question

Xcode comes with a lot of things that are essential to building to the iPhone and/or iPad. In fact a lot of it I am not even aware of because it is so 'behind the scenes'.

On the other hand, I have recently been exposed to the advantages of using Vim as an editor. Is there any setup which would make using Vim an efficient option when developing for the iOS platforms? Or would it be so complicated to combine the two as to make this question moot?

In other words, if you have any tips, advice or warnings when using Vim and Xcode together, I am all ears!

Answer 1

Developing for iOS or Mac with Vim can be really powerful and fast, especially if you use TDD or want quick feedback.

But it takes a bit of finagling to get it working. The few important things you need to know are:

• Use the xcodebuild command-line tool to run your build and units from some vimscript.
• Use the clang_complete plugin to give you full code completion from within vim.
• Use the ios.vim and cocoa.vim plugins for navigation.

This is my preferred method of working. In fact, I wrote the ios.vim plugin to make this easier for more people.

Answer 2

I've been there already...

I love vim and regularly use it in my day-by-day C++ development on *nix platforms, but I also like all of Xcode's features which, specially with latest Xcode >= 4.3 and clang backend, give a real plus in terms of auto-completion and symbol referencing.

I think I've found the optimal solution with the great (although not officially supported by Apple) XVim plugin.

Hoping that future Xcode upgrades won't break it (it's still working fine with latest developers' previews of 4.5), this really allows you to keep your fingers moving as you've learned doing in Vim while working with Xcode, which as I said, is for me the optimal solution.