Vim Projectionist

Vim: Projectionist

A really useful plugin that I have recently been working with is vim projectionist.

What makes this particularly useful is the ability to quickly navigate to what it calls are “alternate” files.

For e.g., I can open up a file lib/my_class.rb - type :A and it will navigate to spec/my_class_spec.rb. Beforehand, I would make heavy use of NERDTree/Ctrl-P to open new files.

Instead of :A, you can type :AS (open up the alternate file in a horizontal split), :AV (vertical split), or :AT (new tab).

There’s other things you can do as well. If you use vim dispatch, you can set default dispatch tasks.

Here is .projections.json file I have configured for a ruby project;

{
  "*": {"make": "rake"},
  "spec/*_spec.rb": {
    "dispatch": "rspec {file}",
    "alternate": "lib/{}.rb"
  },
  "lib/*.rb": {
    "alternate": "spec/{}_spec.rb"
  }
}

If I’m on a file under spec and I run Dispatch, it’ll run rspec on the current file. If I’m on some production code under lib, it’ll run the dispatch task on the alternate file, which in this case will run rspec on the spec.

You can also setup tasks that start when a file is opened, i.e. rails server if you are working on a rails project.