10 ms·

Vim on Cloud9 IDE

103 points by sergimansilla 15y ago

Cloud9 IDE now supports Vim keybindings!

udp 15y ago
I hope they can pull this off, because my experience with Vim emulation plugins is they don't even come close to being Vim. Vim is so vast that everyone has their own way of using it, and what one person might consider an obscure feature could be essential for someone else (plus losing my .vimrc would be like losing an arm). I wonder if it would be possible to run Vim itself in a browser using Emscripten or something?
- lucian1900 15y ago
  Although not in a browser, I've found Emacs' Evil mode to be very good. It even has sane buffer management. I've been using it for the past month or so.
gexla 15y ago
Of course, Vim mode isn't completely Vim mode without all the add-ons and customizations we do. Depending on those additions, we may require things from the environment of the underlying OS. Some of us may go even further and break into scripting certain customizations. Vim is also open source. The UI can replace some of those customizations, but that requires grabbing the mouse. Light users of Vim may be interested, but it's not enough yet to reel in the power users. I do like the look and it renders great in my Linux browsers, which isn't the case with much of the web out there. I'm intrigued enough to at least give it a try.
- Derbasti 15y ago
  That said, implementing all the basic movement commands and maybe some tag navigation goes a long way towards making any source code editor more useful. But I concur in that I would also demand macros, text objects and registers to really make it delightful. Frankly, though, most plugins I use could just as well be implemented as IDE features. Refactoring stuff, project management, debugging... I would not mind doing that the IDE way instead of the Vim way. ViEmu (MSVC) comes pretty close to that. Vico is on a good way, too.
mcrittenden 15y ago
Looks like lots of useful vim features are missing at this point. For example, "ci(" and "df(" don't work. Hopefully it'll become more feature-complete in the future.
krmmalik 15y ago
I'm genuinely very disappointed with Cloud9 IDE, and that so only because i can never get it to install. I've tried it in both Linux and Windows environments and for one reason or the other either the installation script fails or the server.js file does, and resolving the file path issues and dependency issues is a real nightmare.
- HnNoPassMailer 15y ago
  Isn't the whole point of cloud9 to not need an install process?
- drivebyacct2 15y ago
  Really? Last time I tried it, it was a git clone and executing one, maybe two commands. I've seen very early unix beginners get it running quickly... sudo apt-get install libssl0.9.8 git clone https://github.com/ajaxorg/cloud9.git cloud9 ./cloud9/bin/cloud9.sh (roughly) Yep, just tried in a clear dir, it's up and running with that alone.
  - poink 15y ago
    I've never used Cloud9 before, but that just worked for me on a Xubuntu VM. As a Vim fanboy, I'll be giving it a shot.
  - maratd 15y ago
    Ok. Let's try that: support/node-builds-v4/node-linux64: error while loading shared libraries: libssl.so.0.9.8: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory Wait, what? Ahh, I have a newer version installed and it really wants the old 0.9.8. Let's fake the links and see what happens: ./cloud9/bin/cloud9.sh: line 11: 23557 Segmentation fault support/node-builds-v4/node-linux64 bin/cloud9.js "$@" -a x-www-browser Not good. Maybe I can try the node already installed on my system instead of the bundled binaries? Sure, let's try that: Error: require.paths is removed. Use node_modules folders, or the NODE_PATH environment variable instead. Right. Because it's not compatible with the latest stable version of NodeJS, which is 0.6 ... that's what the guy was talking about. Unless you want to setup a box with the exact dependencies that it needs and use it only for that, it'll be a real pain.
benatkin 15y ago
The title is misleading. I thought they'd developed a vim plugin for connecting to a Cloud9 project.
newston 15y ago
I wanted to come here and complain how they published a buggy and incomplete plugin. Then I remembered how I use vim keybindings for Chrome (Vimium). That would be Vim (cloud9) inside Vim (Vimium), which is just wrong of course... Now I can say, the vim mode in cloud9 is really usable. Good work, the only thing I miss is a .webvimrc :)
asciimo 15y ago
The first thought that crossed my mind was, "this may make my Chromebook useful!" I liked the concept of developing in Cloud9 on a Chromebook, but without Vim it was less alluring.
jballanc 15y ago
Very cool! Cloud9 is, IMHO, getting closer and closer to being a legitimate choice for non-trivial development work. A few requests for this plugin, though: * Allow me to remap my keys...especially <esc>. I prefer to use <C-s> for <esc> since I don't like reaching with my pinky * I like that ':' takes me to the console, but why does it also enter a ':' character into the console? This means that executing a console command from the keyboard requires ':'+<backspace>+<command>...which kinda sucks * Vimscript support? I realize this is completely non-trivial, but there are certain plugins that I simply cannot live without (yankring, for example...actually, just give me yankring and I'll forget about Vimscript support for now ;-) Overall, though, I like what I see so far (you even implemented visual mode, yay!). Keep up the good work!
- danneu 15y ago
  jj is another good remap for Esc. :imap jj <Esc>
  - nicksergeant 15y ago
    I tend to use jj far too much, so I mapped <esc> to jk

103 points by sergimansilla 15y ago

Cloud9 IDE now supports Vim keybindings!

udp 15y ago

I hope they can pull this off, because my experience with Vim emulation plugins is they don't even come close to being Vim. Vim is so vast that everyone has their own way of using it, and what one person might consider an obscure feature could be essential for someone else (plus losing my .vimrc would be like losing an arm). I wonder if it would be possible to run Vim itself in a browser using Emscripten or something?

lucian1900 15y ago
Although not in a browser, I've found Emacs' Evil mode to be very good. It even has sane buffer management. I've been using it for the past month or so.

gexla 15y ago

Of course, Vim mode isn't completely Vim mode without all the add-ons and customizations we do. Depending on those additions, we may require things from the environment of the underlying OS. Some of us may go even further and break into scripting certain customizations. Vim is also open source. The UI can replace some of those customizations, but that requires grabbing the mouse. Light users of Vim may be interested, but it's not enough yet to reel in the power users. I do like the look and it renders great in my Linux browsers, which isn't the case with much of the web out there. I'm intrigued enough to at least give it a try.

Derbasti 15y ago
That said, implementing all the basic movement commands and maybe some tag navigation goes a long way towards making any source code editor more useful. But I concur in that I would also demand macros, text objects and registers to really make it delightful. Frankly, though, most plugins I use could just as well be implemented as IDE features. Refactoring stuff, project management, debugging... I would not mind doing that the IDE way instead of the Vim way. ViEmu (MSVC) comes pretty close to that. Vico is on a good way, too.

mcrittenden 15y ago

Looks like lots of useful vim features are missing at this point. For example, "ci(" and "df(" don't work. Hopefully it'll become more feature-complete in the future.

krmmalik 15y ago

I'm genuinely very disappointed with Cloud9 IDE, and that so only because i can never get it to install. I've tried it in both Linux and Windows environments and for one reason or the other either the installation script fails or the server.js file does, and resolving the file path issues and dependency issues is a real nightmare.

HnNoPassMailer 15y ago
Isn't the whole point of cloud9 to not need an install process?
drivebyacct2 15y ago
Really? Last time I tried it, it was a git clone and executing one, maybe two commands. I've seen very early unix beginners get it running quickly... sudo apt-get install libssl0.9.8 git clone https://github.com/ajaxorg/cloud9.git cloud9 ./cloud9/bin/cloud9.sh (roughly) Yep, just tried in a clear dir, it's up and running with that alone.
- poink 15y ago
  I've never used Cloud9 before, but that just worked for me on a Xubuntu VM. As a Vim fanboy, I'll be giving it a shot.
- maratd 15y ago
  Ok. Let's try that: support/node-builds-v4/node-linux64: error while loading shared libraries: libssl.so.0.9.8: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory Wait, what? Ahh, I have a newer version installed and it really wants the old 0.9.8. Let's fake the links and see what happens: ./cloud9/bin/cloud9.sh: line 11: 23557 Segmentation fault support/node-builds-v4/node-linux64 bin/cloud9.js "$@" -a x-www-browser Not good. Maybe I can try the node already installed on my system instead of the bundled binaries? Sure, let's try that: Error: require.paths is removed. Use node_modules folders, or the NODE_PATH environment variable instead. Right. Because it's not compatible with the latest stable version of NodeJS, which is 0.6 ... that's what the guy was talking about. Unless you want to setup a box with the exact dependencies that it needs and use it only for that, it'll be a real pain.

benatkin 15y ago

The title is misleading. I thought they'd developed a vim plugin for connecting to a Cloud9 project.

newston 15y ago

I wanted to come here and complain how they published a buggy and incomplete plugin. Then I remembered how I use vim keybindings for Chrome (Vimium). That would be Vim (cloud9) inside Vim (Vimium), which is just wrong of course... Now I can say, the vim mode in cloud9 is really usable. Good work, the only thing I miss is a .webvimrc :)

asciimo 15y ago

The first thought that crossed my mind was, "this may make my Chromebook useful!" I liked the concept of developing in Cloud9 on a Chromebook, but without Vim it was less alluring.

jballanc 15y ago

Very cool! Cloud9 is, IMHO, getting closer and closer to being a legitimate choice for non-trivial development work. A few requests for this plugin, though: * Allow me to remap my keys...especially <esc>. I prefer to use <C-s> for <esc> since I don't like reaching with my pinky * I like that ':' takes me to the console, but why does it also enter a ':' character into the console? This means that executing a console command from the keyboard requires ':'+<backspace>+<command>...which kinda sucks * Vimscript support? I realize this is completely non-trivial, but there are certain plugins that I simply cannot live without (yankring, for example...actually, just give me yankring and I'll forget about Vimscript support for now ;-) Overall, though, I like what I see so far (you even implemented visual mode, yay!). Keep up the good work!

danneu 15y ago
jj is another good remap for Esc. :imap jj <Esc>
- nicksergeant 15y ago
  I tend to use jj far too much, so I mapped <esc> to jk