Getting MacVim to run properly on Yosemite

I had postponed upgrading to Yosemite because of all the horror stories about 24-hour delays while the installation program copied all homebrew files from /usr/local to hell and back, and things running slowly afterwards, and, well, what always happens when you upgrade.

But I am progressive by nature and there were several things I wanted to install that required Yosemite and that was going to be a thing too. My great surprise was first that perhaps because I have a solid state drive on my MacBook Air, there was a delay, but not that much. And secondly, everything was snappy as all getout after the upgrade. I felt like I had a new computer running!

MacVim has long been my standard Mac text editor, and gvim on Linux, although now Atom with the vim mode and markdown plugins is vying for that position (make sure it’s always running to avoid delays in loading), along with LightPaper for Mac for markdown. Imagine my chagrin when I attempted to open a text file on Yosemite with MacVim, only to find that while the application launched, the window didn’t. No go.

This article explains what I did to remedy the situation completely on my MacBook and bring MacVim back to the contender status it deserves.

Simple Vim plugin management for Javascript development

I’ve written about vim as an IDE before. In this case, however, in order to prepare for node hacking, and also in line with a recent discussion about IDE’s on the node mailing list, I’m documenting here notes I made while getting geared up with gvim (macvim) for SSJS development with some of the more important plugins that were mentioned (you know, it’s that “so how do I actually do this” moment) (this should all work fine on either MacBook Pro or Ubuntu/Linux):

Konqueror and Vim 7 as IDE

First off, see Viva Vim 7! (installing on Ubuntu Dapper) .

Second off, see Konqueror with Midnight Commander theme on Ubuntu . Now we're all on the same page, with Konqueror (in all its variations) and Vim 7 installed.

Also assumed here is the installation of the ExuberantCtags package, so that ctags can be generated for ruby, php, python, perl, and a host of other languages (see ExuberantCtags) as well as the C language. On my Ubuntu box installation was straightforward with Synaptic.

The main interest here is using (and remembering how to use in between actual programming bouts: different projects hook you on different tool sets) Vim 7 as a lightweight alternative to Eclipse.

That may sound like a mouthful, but we'll see it is not an exaggeration.

Viva Vim 7! (installing on Ubuntu Dapper)

Unfortunately, vim 7 didn't make it into the Dapper Ubuntu 6.06 LTS.

So the best way to install it without fighting with dependencies is to amend your apt-get sources.list file with the following line (works fine for me on Ubuntu Dapper, 6.06 LTS freshly installed October 2006):

deb http://www.freshnet.org/debian/ dapper/

Then go ahead and install (see below, and see below for amd64 (above repository of course won't work for amd64 installations)).

Thanks, Freshnet.it !

If you're using Synaptic, just hit Settings >> Repositories, then hit the Add button, then the Custom button and paste in the above "Apt line" repository info and hit "Add Channel". Then close the Software Preferences windows and hit the "Reload" button to update package info. And update the appropriate vim7 package you are looking for (vim perl, vim ruby, or whatever you are using).