VIM as an IDE - Suggestions

Question

I am looking for recommendations on using VIM as an IDE. I generally code in a number of programming languages, including C, C++, assembler, MATLAB, Maple, BASH scripts, to name a few.

In general, I like to use a single IDE for the bulk of my projects for the sake of consistency, and I have found that I perform about 90% of all my coding in VIM, and occasionally use Eclipse instead for certain projects in C/C++ (ie: projects people have already put together as an Eclipse project, or PIC24/32 projects from www.microchip.com).

I am already very familiar with the basic functionality of VIM (windows vs buffers, text manipulation, scripting), and would like to use it as my primary IDE. I have already taken a few tips from here: http://vim.wikia.com/wiki/Use_Vim_like_an_IDE#Writing_Code

I already use the nerdTree plugin for directory browsing in a project, etc, but I need to do something about code completion and symbol resolution, as those are my two greatest concerns.

1. Symbol resolution
   • I have some limited experience in the use of C-tags, and wanted a suggestion on what I should use if I am working with a VERY large code-base that changes frequently. The projects I work on typically are pulling in header files from at least a dozen other projects, and I would like to be able to jump to the file where a function, constant, or macro is defined quickly (ie: like the CTRL-G feature in Eclipse, "jump to definition"), as well as rapidly get a list of all calls/references to a function/macro/constant/etc (ie: like the CTRL-SHIFT-G feature in Eclipse, "Show all references in project or current working directory").
2. Tab completion
   • One of the features I really like in Visual Studio and Eclipse, for example, is when I type in a variable name (ie: pointer to struct) and it resolves the names and types of all structure members and gives me a tab completion list to choose the appropriate member. They also point out when I've incorrectly used "." vs "->" for member access. I've tried superTab in VIM, but I just couldn't get it working. I also want the tab-completion feature to use the same C-tags as generated by the symbol resolution plugin
3. Handling build output
   • The final concern of mine is having an auto-generated list of build warnings and build errors. When I, for example, just run "make all" at the command-line prompt, it is a pain to have to read through code listings to manually find all build warnings.

I realize this is a lot to ask, and that I could always just fall-back to Visual Studio or Eclipse, but I really want just a simple cross-platform console-capable modal editor for all my development needs, and none of the major IDE's out there fill this need.

Thank you all in advance.

Answer 1

• http://eclim.org/ - bring Eclipse functionality to the Vim editor
• https://github.com/scrooloose/syntastic - syntax checker warnings in quickfix list

I think (but haven't checked) that Eclim satisfies #1 and #2 while I'm sure that Syntastic satisfies #3. More things of interest:

• https://github.com/Lokaltog/vim-powerline - just nice
• https://github.com/kien/ctrlp.vim - quick file finder
• https://github.com/tpope/vim-pathogen - plugin manager (to install the others)

And are you aware of omnicompletion via Ctrl-p and Ctrl-n (prev and next) in insert mode? That's not code completion, but frequently does the job.