Re: Plugin alternatives (was: Profiling vim)

On Thursday, March 28, 2013 1:39:16 PM UTC-5, Gary Johnson wrote:
> On 2013-03-27, Christian Brabandt wrote:
> > On Wed, March 27, 2013 10:13, Marco wrote:
> > > On 2013 03 27 Christian Brabandt wrote:
> > >
> > >> What does git-gutter do better than any of the existing plugins?
> > >
> > > What are those existing pluginsť? I'm curious.
> >
> > http://www.vim.org/scripts/script.php?script_id=3052
> > http://www.vim.org/scripts/script.php?script_id=2712
> > http://www.vim.org/scripts/script.php?script_id=2584
> > http://www.vim.org/scripts/script.php?script_id=1881
> >
> > There are probably even more...

This is funny, because I just installed a change indicator plugin yesterday (I
didn't use one before). I used this one (which is quite new, and not in your
list):

http://www.vim.org/scripts/script.php?script_id=4487

I save too often (impulsively, even) for a "changes since last save" to be
useful to me at all. So Christian's "changesPlugin" (at least from reading the
description) is no good for me.

I did not see sign-diff, which is one reason I didn't try it. I may not have
anyway; it has not had an update on vim.org since 2009 (maybe that's just
because it's so stable, I don't know). Additionally, the description says "a
cmd.exe shows up at front". I don't know how distracting that would be, the
video link won't load for me.

I also did not see quickfixsigns, I did not realize that one could show change
indicators as well. This one I probably won't try, unless the balloon popups
show the actual changed lines or something. I already get the quickfix signs
through Eclim so I don't need that feature. Apparently the plugin also does
relative line numbers and some other things. This seems like too much feature
bloat for my tastes. Eclim is the only 3rd-party plugin I use frequently that
has a ton of features I don't use. I generally like my plugins lean, mean, and
focused.

svndiff doesn't work on Windows. I tried this one first and attempted to make it
work on Windows, but it uses shell redirection in ways that just won't work for
Windows, so I gave it up.

From the name and from a quick glance at the documentation, it looks like
git-gutter only supports git. I only use Mercurial and SVN. So that's a complete
nonstarter.

signify (the one I installed) didn't work on Windows out-of-the-box when I
installed it, but the fixes were easy and have been incorporated (in much better
fashion) in the upstream. So I'm using it now and am quite happy with it. It is
a small, focused plugin with all the features I want for now. The only thing
it's missing is an easy way to see the original line for changed or deleted
lines. I could see myself adding a balloonexpr for this in the future if the
devs don't do it for me first.

>
> What is the attractiveness of using signs to indicate where changes
> have taken place? When I follow changes, I'm more interested in
> _what_ the changes were, not just that something changed. For this
> I use DiffOrig or a variation that compares the current buffer with
> the latest (or a specified) VCS version. Having a sign in the left
> column doesn't tell me enough to be useful.
>

I like the visual indication of where I've made changes; I can normally remember
what those changes were after seeing the visual reminder that I made one. It's a
nice way to remind myself, "oops, I'd better remove that debug code before I
build" or "oh yeah, I added a new variable, I better defined it" or other such
things. I always do a full diff before I commit, but most of the time I just am
looking for a quick reminder of what I'm working on, and going out to Kdiff3
or hacking a "diff with comitted version" vim command is overkill.

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