You can also add a line like this to your .vimrc: au FileType make setlocal ts=4 sts=4 sw=4 noet and have vim automatically use "hard" tabs when it detects

You can also add a line like this to your .vimrc: au FileType make setlocal ts=4 sts=4 sw=4 noet and have vim automatically use "hard" tabs when it detects that you're editing a Makefile. Of course, you can s/4/2/g or whatever your preferred tab width is.