Monday, May 4. 2009

Integrating Xcode and VIM

Programming
I've been using vim on the command line for ages, but just recently began work on integrating it better with Xcode, my primary development environment. Adding functionality to VIM is quite easy, and thanks to AppleScript on Mac OS, telling Xcode what to do from VIM is easy as well! First you'll need a copy of MacVim.

Download and install that in your /Applications folder. Once done, open up Xcode and navigate your way to the 'File Types' tag. Under file->text->sourcecode->sourcecode.c, click where it says "Default (Source Code File). You'll then get a popup menu. Select 'External Editor' and then Other and find MacVim in your /Applications folder.

Now when you double click on a C/C++/Objective-C source file within Xcode, it will open up with MacVim as the editor rather than the default Xcode source code editor.

Now, I didn't like having to change windows back to Xcode in order to make the projects build. Thus, I added a few lines to my ~/.vimrc:

    " update the :make command to tell Xcode to build
    set makeprg=osascript\ -e\ \"tell\ application\ \\\"Xcode\\\"\"\ -e\ \"build\"\ -e\ \"end\ tell\"

    function! XcodeClean()
            silent execute ':!osascript -e "tell application \"Xcode\"" -e "Clean" -e "end tell"'
    endfunction
    command! -complete=command XcodeClean call XcodeClean()

    function! XcodeDebug()
            silent execute '!osascript -e "tell application \"Xcode\"" -e "Debug" -e "end tell"'
    endfunction
    command! -complete=command XcodeDebug call XcodeDebug()

    " Command-K cleans the project
    :noremap <D-k> :XcodeClean<CR>
    " Command-Return Starts the program in the debugger
    :noremap <D-CR> :XcodeDebug<CR>


And we now have VIM integrated with Xcode. There's only one slight problem that I've found. When starting the debugger, VIM waits for a return even after you're done debugging in Xcode. Hitting CTRL-C gets you back to the editor. If anyone has any suggestions on how to get around this little issue, let me know!
Posted by Grant Limberg in Programming at 16:07 | Comments (3) | Trackbacks (0)
Defined tags for this entry: , ,
Related entries by tags:
Integrating Xcode and VIM - Part 2 - Breakpoints
Great Post on Cocoa Development on Theocacao
Creating Custom Xcode File Templates
It's been a while...
GLSLinkedList
Bookmark Integrating Xcode and VIM at del.icio.us Digg Integrating Xcode and VIM Mixx Integrating Xcode and VIM Bloglines Integrating Xcode and VIM Technorati Integrating Xcode and VIM Fark this: Integrating Xcode and VIM Bookmark Integrating Xcode and VIM at YahooMyWeb Bookmark Integrating Xcode and VIM at Furl.net Bookmark Integrating Xcode and VIM at reddit.com Bookmark Integrating Xcode and VIM at blinklist.com Bookmark Integrating Xcode and VIM at Spurl.net Bookmark Integrating Xcode and VIM at NewsVine Bookmark Integrating Xcode and VIM at Simpy.com Bookmark Integrating Xcode and VIM at blogmarks Bookmark Integrating Xcode and VIM with wists Bookmark Integrating Xcode and VIM at Ma.gnolia.com wong it! Bookmark using any bookmark manager! Stumble It!

Trackbacks
Trackback specific URI for this entry

No Trackbacks

Comments
Display comments as (Linear | Threaded)

Thanks for the post!!!
Comment (1)
#1 Allan on 2009-12-17 16:45 (Reply)
Awesome post! The only annoying issue I'm having is that whenever I call Make from vim (command-b), after a successful build Vim will always open a new blank buffer who's name is the current date, and I have to keep manually switching back to the source file I opened from xcode. Any way around this?
Comment (1)
#2 Mike D on 2010-02-07 23:21 (Reply)
This is teh awesome. Thanks for the clever solution to launching Xcode's debugger.
Comment (1)
#3 mitjak (Homepage) on 2010-02-21 01:21 (Reply)

Add Comment

Enclosing asterisks marks text as bold (*word*), underscore are made via _word_.
Standard emoticons like :-) and ;-) are converted to images.
You can use [geshi lang=lang_name [,ln={y|n}]][/geshi] tags to embed source code snippets.
E-Mail addresses will not be displayed and will only be used for E-Mail notifications

To prevent automated Bots from commentspamming, please enter the string you see in the image below in the appropriate input box. Your comment will only be submitted if the strings match. Please ensure that your browser supports and accepts cookies, or your comment cannot be verified correctly.
CAPTCHA
 
 

Quicksearch

Show tagged entries

Archives

Categories



All categories

Bookmark

Open All | Close All

Add to Technorati Favorites

Syndicate This Blog

Powered by

Twitter