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Show HN: sachet – handcraft your Vim environment online

183 points by aam1r 14y ago

pajju 14y ago
Good concept, this can become a marketplace to find and discover Vim plugins. You have moved one step ahead to easily install(but manage the same?) Little feedback: 1. Add options to see what a developer just installed. I find it very interesting to see other's development environments, their workflows, history and .rc files. 2. Create a system where developers love to share their workflows, environments, history, vimrc, bashrc settings. Following and connecting with similar workflow developers would be cool. Overall your first step is perfect!
- toki5 14y ago
  Seconding step 2 -- vim environments, to vim-heavy developers, are a little like office spaces to me. Each has its perks; each person likes a different desk calendar; I like my door open and my coworker likes his closed. It'd be awesome if you extended your site such that I could upload my vim configuration and plugins to share them with others -- and then discover someone who has done me one better!
- jmathai 14y ago
  So true. I'd love to try other people's recipe as a downloadable bundle. If I could sign up and have it keep a history of downloads I made or save settings so I could go back and tweak my existing configuration that'd be wonderful. +1, really awesome.
- goldfeld 14y ago
  This is really a great creation, please allow people to submit (and vote) plugins, count my vim-seek in as soon as that is possible! I also second the parent's suggestions, making it a social experience would be amazing and a real boon to vim users everywhere. Also allowing little functions and custom mappings that people have in their vimrc, in a more organized and social way than those vim tips websites do, would be awesome.
mapleoin 14y ago
Finally I can disable syntax highlighting in vim!
m0nastic 14y ago
This is a nice effort. I'm probably in the tiny majority of people who have been using Vim for ~15 years but have never bothered with any customization or plugins (I'm also a philistine who uses the arrow keys for navigation).
- tiziano88 14y ago
  I would argue you haven't actually used Vim then :)
  - amitdugar 14y ago
    So one has to have customized Vim to have actually used Vim :) ?
    - daxelrod 14y ago
      I read that as a reaction to the use of arrow keys.
peterwwillis 14y ago
People are still putting up Google+ buttons?
- c4m 14y ago
  You have one on your blog, for example.
  - peterwwillis 14y ago
    Yikes! I never put that there. Sneaky Google... disables navbar
liquidise 14y ago
I notice that soft-tabs setting is a dropdown adjusting size. Does this not support a standard tab configuration?
tnorthcutt 14y ago
On the plugins page, I'd suggest adding links to the plugins themselves (whether that be a github repository or some other page) for more information about them.
- MikeKusold 14y ago
  Also I would move the description of the plugin to be under the title but above the photo. It took me a few seconds to find where the description was.
julius 14y ago
Awesome tool. Seems super useful not only for new vim users. Being a vim-pro, but using it for very specific tasks only, it always annoys the crap out of me, setting vim up with reasonable defaults on a new machine/OS. One thing which I found missing from your nice selection of options is how vim handles the clipboard. Please let me choose (or include useful defaults if you have not done so already) how vim's internal clipboard interacts with the clipboard of the OS.
- nXqd 14y ago
  how about your dotfiles. I can bootstrap everything in new computer in one or two scripts :)
  - julius 14y ago
    For OSX I have my vim files synced via Dropbox. But when you want to use vim on Windows or Linux you have to reconfigure quite a bit. I love fiddling around with editor settings as much as the next guy. But when you have a specific task at hand and just want to quickly use vim then realising its not already set up. Copying configs and googling around to make them work in the current environment can become a very unwanted time sink.
    - scottmey 14y ago
      I'm an OSX user, but I just created a repository (on Github) and anytime I add new plugins/configurations I try to commit those changes...as I spent a good deal of time customizing my setup at one point. You could create one for Windows & one for Linux.
      - roryokane 14y ago
        Yes, I also store my dotfiles in GitHub – https://github.com/roryokane/dotvim https://github.com/roryokane/dotvim. To make installation on other computers easier, in the README, I list the shell commands to install the configuration for each OS. Installing my config is just a matter of copying and pasting those commands, and waiting for each command to finish.
nXqd 14y ago
Awesome tool man :D It's really convenience for new user to learn and use vim like pro :) Great contribution to VIM community.
weazy 14y ago
Nice! Maby a small video preview or gif would help new users to understand what each plugin actually does? Links to the plugin sites would be great too, as they usually have documentation on them.
fournm 14y ago
I know this makes me some sort of monster but I'm disappointed in the lack of ability to have noexpandtab. Otherwise though, good tool, looks great.
dysoco 14y ago
Now I just need something like this for Emacs :P Although I like Vim too, so I'll try it.
- blaedj 14y ago
  I'll second that, I would pay for something like this for emacs, the constant configuration and switching between linux/windows is pushing me to sublime text...
flexterra 14y ago
This is cool. While VIM is not my main text editor I use it quite often and this is just the amount of configuration I needed. Thanks!
canthonytucci 14y ago
I thought about purchasing vimrc.it for nearly this exact purpose this morning. This is fantastic.
lowboy 14y ago
Great concept! I'd suggest offering Vundle[0] as an alternative to Pathogen, or even replacing it altogether. I've found it to be a better system managing bundles by config in your vimrc and running :BundleInstall/Update/Remove/etc instead of git cloning into a bundle dir. [0]: https://github.com/gmarik/vundle https://github.com/gmarik/vundle
roryokane 14y ago
I just randomly discovered this similar site: http://vimrc.info/generate http://vimrc.info/generate. It lets you choose to leave settings out of your file as well as turn them on or off, but it doesn’t include color schemes and plugins.
xur17 14y ago
Looks great! I just found a few plugins that I didn't know about yet. Suggestion for future enhancement: You should add a script that we can run on the download page that downloads and installs the new configuration to our local machine. This would be especially helpful for installing on a remote machine, or even on a local machine. Something like: wget http://url.com/newconfigurl.zip http://url.com/newconfigurl.zip unzip newconfigurl.zip //Move files
wf 14y ago
I'm so happy you've done this; just a few weeks ago I was helping a friend who had just bought a new MBP set up their environment and I googled for this site but found nothing great, I was considering doing it myself. Great job!
tathagatadg 14y ago
I was on Windows while I saw this ... and took a few googling to find out what goes where to get it working in gVim (which I hardly use). - "autoload" and "bundles" from "vim" folder in the downloaded archive should go inside "C:\Program Files (x86)\Vim\vimfiles" - rename the _vimrc in in "C:\Program Files (x86)\Vim" as _vimrc.old - copy the vimrc from the downloaded archive as _vimrc into "C:\Program Files (x86)\Vim"

183 points by aam1r 14y ago

pajju 14y ago

Good concept, this can become a marketplace to find and discover Vim plugins. You have moved one step ahead to easily install(but manage the same?) Little feedback: 1. Add options to see what a developer just installed. I find it very interesting to see other's development environments, their workflows, history and .rc files. 2. Create a system where developers love to share their workflows, environments, history, vimrc, bashrc settings. Following and connecting with similar workflow developers would be cool. Overall your first step is perfect!

toki5 14y ago
Seconding step 2 -- vim environments, to vim-heavy developers, are a little like office spaces to me. Each has its perks; each person likes a different desk calendar; I like my door open and my coworker likes his closed. It'd be awesome if you extended your site such that I could upload my vim configuration and plugins to share them with others -- and then discover someone who has done me one better!
jmathai 14y ago
So true. I'd love to try other people's recipe as a downloadable bundle. If I could sign up and have it keep a history of downloads I made or save settings so I could go back and tweak my existing configuration that'd be wonderful. +1, really awesome.
goldfeld 14y ago
This is really a great creation, please allow people to submit (and vote) plugins, count my vim-seek in as soon as that is possible! I also second the parent's suggestions, making it a social experience would be amazing and a real boon to vim users everywhere. Also allowing little functions and custom mappings that people have in their vimrc, in a more organized and social way than those vim tips websites do, would be awesome.

mapleoin 14y ago

Finally I can disable syntax highlighting in vim!

m0nastic 14y ago

This is a nice effort. I'm probably in the tiny majority of people who have been using Vim for ~15 years but have never bothered with any customization or plugins (I'm also a philistine who uses the arrow keys for navigation).

tiziano88 14y ago
I would argue you haven't actually used Vim then :)
- amitdugar 14y ago
  So one has to have customized Vim to have actually used Vim :) ?
  - daxelrod 14y ago
    I read that as a reaction to the use of arrow keys.

peterwwillis 14y ago

People are still putting up Google+ buttons?

c4m 14y ago
You have one on your blog, for example.
- peterwwillis 14y ago
  Yikes! I never put that there. Sneaky Google... disables navbar

liquidise 14y ago

I notice that soft-tabs setting is a dropdown adjusting size. Does this not support a standard tab configuration?

tnorthcutt 14y ago

On the plugins page, I'd suggest adding links to the plugins themselves (whether that be a github repository or some other page) for more information about them.

MikeKusold 14y ago
Also I would move the description of the plugin to be under the title but above the photo. It took me a few seconds to find where the description was.

julius 14y ago

Awesome tool. Seems super useful not only for new vim users. Being a vim-pro, but using it for very specific tasks only, it always annoys the crap out of me, setting vim up with reasonable defaults on a new machine/OS. One thing which I found missing from your nice selection of options is how vim handles the clipboard. Please let me choose (or include useful defaults if you have not done so already) how vim's internal clipboard interacts with the clipboard of the OS.

nXqd 14y ago
how about your dotfiles. I can bootstrap everything in new computer in one or two scripts :)
- julius 14y ago
  For OSX I have my vim files synced via Dropbox. But when you want to use vim on Windows or Linux you have to reconfigure quite a bit. I love fiddling around with editor settings as much as the next guy. But when you have a specific task at hand and just want to quickly use vim then realising its not already set up. Copying configs and googling around to make them work in the current environment can become a very unwanted time sink.
  - scottmey 14y ago
    I'm an OSX user, but I just created a repository (on Github) and anytime I add new plugins/configurations I try to commit those changes...as I spent a good deal of time customizing my setup at one point. You could create one for Windows & one for Linux.
    - roryokane 14y ago
      Yes, I also store my dotfiles in GitHub – https://github.com/roryokane/dotvim https://github.com/roryokane/dotvim. To make installation on other computers easier, in the README, I list the shell commands to install the configuration for each OS. Installing my config is just a matter of copying and pasting those commands, and waiting for each command to finish.

nXqd 14y ago

Awesome tool man :D It's really convenience for new user to learn and use vim like pro :) Great contribution to VIM community.

weazy 14y ago

Nice! Maby a small video preview or gif would help new users to understand what each plugin actually does? Links to the plugin sites would be great too, as they usually have documentation on them.

fournm 14y ago

I know this makes me some sort of monster but I'm disappointed in the lack of ability to have noexpandtab. Otherwise though, good tool, looks great.

dysoco 14y ago

Now I just need something like this for Emacs :P Although I like Vim too, so I'll try it.

blaedj 14y ago
I'll second that, I would pay for something like this for emacs, the constant configuration and switching between linux/windows is pushing me to sublime text...

flexterra 14y ago

This is cool. While VIM is not my main text editor I use it quite often and this is just the amount of configuration I needed. Thanks!

canthonytucci 14y ago

I thought about purchasing vimrc.it for nearly this exact purpose this morning. This is fantastic.

lowboy 14y ago

Great concept! I'd suggest offering Vundle[0] as an alternative to Pathogen, or even replacing it altogether. I've found it to be a better system managing bundles by config in your vimrc and running :BundleInstall/Update/Remove/etc instead of git cloning into a bundle dir. [0]: https://github.com/gmarik/vundle https://github.com/gmarik/vundle

roryokane 14y ago

I just randomly discovered this similar site: http://vimrc.info/generate http://vimrc.info/generate. It lets you choose to leave settings out of your file as well as turn them on or off, but it doesn’t include color schemes and plugins.

xur17 14y ago

Looks great! I just found a few plugins that I didn't know about yet. Suggestion for future enhancement: You should add a script that we can run on the download page that downloads and installs the new configuration to our local machine. This would be especially helpful for installing on a remote machine, or even on a local machine. Something like: wget http://url.com/newconfigurl.zip http://url.com/newconfigurl.zip unzip newconfigurl.zip //Move files

wf 14y ago

I'm so happy you've done this; just a few weeks ago I was helping a friend who had just bought a new MBP set up their environment and I googled for this site but found nothing great, I was considering doing it myself. Great job!

tathagatadg 14y ago

I was on Windows while I saw this ... and took a few googling to find out what goes where to get it working in gVim (which I hardly use). - "autoload" and "bundles" from "vim" folder in the downloaded archive should go inside "C:\Program Files (x86)\Vim\vimfiles" - rename the _vimrc in in "C:\Program Files (x86)\Vim" as _vimrc.old - copy the vimrc from the downloaded archive as _vimrc into "C:\Program Files (x86)\Vim"