Developing a Project in a Statically Typed Language Entirely in VIM

Question

I've recently started taking Scala to heart (sweet Python, I still love you, but your collections just can't match Scala's), and in doing so am now using IntelliJ IDEA almost entirely for development.

However, IDEA's Scala plugin is far from perfect, and there are many times I wish I could just go back to my one editor love -- VIM. Unfortunately, there are a few Intellisense-like features I still don't know how to retrieve. Namely,

1. automatic imports
2. type inconsistency recognition
3. method definition lookup
4. a list of valid methods or variables for instances

Can anyone recommend any tools to get these done? While Scala is the language most preferred, these concerns are equally valid for C++ and Java. I really would like to leave IDEs behind!

Answer 1

For C and C++, I heard about a project using Clang (LLVM) to bring the autocomplete feature to Vim. Read more here : http://zwiener.org/vimautocomplete.html

Answer 2

Use ENSIME. There are some forks that add vim stuff, such as this one.

I don't know that ENSIME will actually provide the features you are looking for, but I think it is the best shot at getting it done. It might be a matter of adding the proper macros for it. Also, ENSIME has progressed a lot on the main line, so a lot of merging might be required to make most of it.

Here's the features available in ENSIME:

• Highlight errors and warnings in your code buffers.
• Inspect the type of any expression.
• Browse packages
• Completion for variables, methods, constructors, etc.
• Incrementally search through classpath symbols
• Find all references to a symbol
• Jump to symbol definitions.
• Semantic Highlighting
• Automated Refactorings (rename, organize imports, extract method)
• Source Formatting
• AST-based selection
• Supports sbt7,10,11
• Supports Maven,Ivy build descriptions
• Embedded sbt shell
• REPL
• Debug support

On the fork I linked to, the follow features have macros written for:

• :EnsimeRepl - read eval print loop (See documentation of vim-addon-async)
• :EnsimeReformatSources - reformat source file and reload it into Vim (vim 7.3 can undo reloading so no care has to be taken)
• :EnsimeDefinition - goto definition (only if its found in source file for now)
• :EnsimeShowTypeAtCursor - show type under cursor in preview window

• :EnsimeTypecheckAll - typecheck all (smart sorting: show the errors of the current buffer you're in first)

• completion: (scope, type (member), constructor) completion

• typechecking the files on bufwrite (is this annoying?)

Answer 3

These features are what makes an IDE. Vim is a text editor. Unfortunetly you cannot have the power of IDE with the speed of a text editor.

You can get SOME semi useful plugins for Vim to make it somewhat more intelligent, but you will never have what IDEA can do.

I want to add the ideally we would have Vim key-bindings within IDE but in my experience they tend to be more buggy then helpful.