Boost Your Vim Workflow: Must‑Try Plugins and Quick Setup Guide

After the first workday of 2019, the author shares a relaxed topic: several frequently used Vim plugins.

Vundle

Vundle is a popular Vim plugin manager with nearly 20 000 stars on GitHub, making it the most widely used tool for handling Vim extensions.

YouCompleteMe (YCM)

YouCompleteMe provides powerful code completion and function navigation, narrowing the gap between Vim and full IDEs, though its installation is a bit more involved. It has over 18 000 stars on GitHub and is highly recommended.

CtrlP

CtrlP enables fuzzy file searching; pressing Ctrl+P lets you type part of a filename, then use Ctrl+J/K to select and jump, greatly speeding up navigation.

NERDTree

NERDTree displays a project’s directory tree similar to an IDE, allowing quick switching between files. It can be toggled with Ctrl+E and moved between windows with Ctrl+W.

ACK (ag.vim)

ACK (via the ag.vim wrapper) offers fast content searching within Linux and Vim, though the original ag tool is no longer maintained.

All the above plugins, except YCM, can be installed through Vundle. Below is a sample Vundle configuration snippet:

Plugin 'VundleVim/Vundle.vim'
Plugin 'scrooloose/nerdtree'
Plugin 'kien/ctrlp.vim'

After adding the plugins, open Vim and run :PluginInstall to complete the installation.