Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by tlack 5593 days ago
I've also been frustrated by these issues. I want to be able to edit a file with local typing speed (i.e., gvim on Windows), but then be able to hit a key and be in a terminal window on that server in that folder to perhaps do a manual grep or rebuild an index or whatever. I feel like we were closer in the 90s with innovative products like Slirp and Term and, yes, Zmodem (and Kermit).

I started trying to build out something like this based on vim's netrw stuff but it never really worked out. I'm not even sure if what I want is part of vim or if it's some nebulous other tool.
1 comments
__david__ 5593 days ago
Sounds like you want Emacs' tramp. On your local emacs, open a file in the form "/user@remote-ssh-host:file" and it will grab the remote file and edit it locally. Crazily all the emacs version control commands and stuff like M-x compile and M-x grep all work in the remote context. Very cool stuff.

Obviously this requires that you use Emacs instead of Vim though. Don't be afraid though, the grass is pretty green over here :-).

link
moe 5593 days ago
No need to switch to an inferior editor. ;-)

Vim has this functionality built right in: http://vimdoc.sourceforge.net/htmldoc/pi_netrw.html#netrw

However, as said above, for me Tramp/netrw are kludges that tend to add more problems than they solve. A real solution can't be constrained to a particular editor.

link
lukeschlather 5593 days ago
In my experience, tramp was even more reliable than sshfs. Both need work before they are truly effective solutions.

Though the latency of my satellite connection outweighs the shortcomings of sshfs. The thing about tramp is that where sshfs hangs up directory listing and file loading, tramp regularly hangs up the editor. (And tramp should really turn off autosave by default.)

link