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by mun2mun 5408 days ago
I don't get it. When I am working on a project I just go to the root project directory and open up vim. NERDTree automatically loads the file structure of the project directory which is my current focus. Why should I need a file-drawer with the unnecessary folders showing?
1 comments
superalloy 5408 days ago
You don’t “should” anything. If you don’t feel the need, then don’t install it.
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mun2mun 5408 days ago
A bit harsh response I think. Sorry I did not get my word right. But can you explain why it is useful to you?
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superalloy 5408 days ago
My response wasn't meant as harsh, it just lacked a smiley ;)

I work on a lot of OSS projects and our company does consultancy. This means I browse other’s projects on a daily basis (i.e. I don’t know the filenames yet). That, combined with the fact that I have a deep love for GUI design and platform consistency, has made me come to the conclusion that something like NERDTree wasn't working for me. I tried to keep on going for a few more weeks, but in the end I decided that writing a file browser would cost me less time than I lost during these few weeks.

I’m glad I wrote it, because now I’m perfectly happy with my MacVim setup, which I wasn't before. I’m also very glad I did not decide to revert to using TextMate or any of the other new closed source editors.

To conclude, it’s a bit of a feeling-thing. I’d invite you to try it out for a while to see if it works for or against your flow. No hard feelings either way :)

PS: It might not be apparent from the article, but the browser provides a few more functions that os x users might be used to in other apps. See the last screenshot: https://github.com/alloy/macvim/wiki/Screenshots.

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pacemkr 5408 days ago
I think I will give this a try. Thank you for writing this and taking the time to release it.

Browsing codebases that I am not familiar with is the exact use case for me. For navigating my own project, I do fine with MacVim + Terminal + "mvim in new tab in existing window conf" [1]. But for exploring an unfamiliar codebase, it's too cumbersome.

---[1]---

  alias mvim="open -a MacVim.app"
  In MacVim Preferences set "Open files from applications" to:

    "in the current window"
          "with a tab for each file"
Then, in Terminal you can do, "mvim file.ext" to open file.ext in a new tab in the existing MacVim window (or new if no window).
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