![[Skip the navigation bar]](../graphics/dot.gif)
The concepts in Tim's Effortless Ctags blog post use Git's init.templatedir setting. Git added the feature in the 1.7.1 release. When I first read the post, my box was running an earlier version. If you're in this boat, the simplest workaround is to putting the hooks into Git's system wide template dir, /usr/share/git-core/templates.
Other alternatives, in case you need them, are either setting the $GIT_TEMPLATE_DIR environment variable or manually specifying the template dir on the command line: git init --template ~/.git_template
A few years ago, I bit the bullet and started using Vim, cold turkey. It's been rewarding. My first step was forking Andrei Zmievski's vim-settings repository.
One very handy thing in Andrei's setup is Yegappan Lakshmanan's Tag List plugin. To that I added Tim Pope's Fugitive plugin. Combining those together with installing Darren Hiebert's Exuberant Ctags and the Git hook concepts in Señor Pope's "Effortless Ctags with Git" moves Vim from a good source code editor to an excellent one.
You can jump from where a function is used to where it is declared by hitting CTRL-]. Hitting F5 produces a pane on the left listing functions in the current file. Tab completion is available. Tag lists are automatically updated when git checkouts, pulls or commits are done.
But, there were a handful of annoying shortcomings. I'll address the bigger issues in separate blog posts. Below are resolutions for the small stuff...
The default process of jumping to a tag opens the file in a new buffer in the current window. I have yet to learn to use The Force, so find tabs easier to use. Therefore, I adjust the tag jump to open a new tab:
nnoremap <C-]> :tab tjump <C-r><C-w><CR>
It seems the syntax highlighter is inefficient or buggy. Large PHP files make vim very slow to respond. An easy fix is to disable syntax highlighting in big files:
au BufReadPost * if getfsize(bufname("%")) > 102400 | set syntax= | endif
Maybe it's just me, but the default colors of MatchParen are very simliar to some colors used by syntax highlighting. This made it difficult to figure out what's what. Tweaking the colors is pretty simple:
highlight MatchParen ctermbg=Blue ctermfg=White
I tend to write more PHP and text than HTML. So having matchpairs add a > everytime I type a < got annoying pretty fast. Placing the following to .vimrc increased my glee:
autocmd BufRead * set matchpairs=(:),{:},[:]
Part of what my Ubuntu Laptop Installation script does is put all of these components in place.