This guide aims to walk you through setting up an environment for doing C++ development on Windows using cygwin, gvim, and the mighty command prompt. After completing this guide, you should have...
- UNIX commands executable from the command prompt
- smart completion (using clang) for C++
- the base for adding more Vim plugins
This guide assumes you have a 64 bit Windows. It has been tested on Windows 7 Home Premium with gvim 7.4-1467 and clang-3.7.
We will start off by installing cygwin. Download
the version that's right for your processor and install it following the
wizard. When prompted for the packages to install, select clang (in the Devel
category). Feel free to select more packages that you like. Remember the path
that you installed cygwin in. It defaults to C:\cygwin64\ (for 64 bit
version), but if you've changed it, you should note that. This guide will
assume you are using the default location.
You can move on to the following steps while cygwin is installing stuff.
The next step is to add the directory of your cygwin binaries to the PATH
environment variable. That's right, you can now type ls and not get schooled
by command prompt! Go to Control Panel and open your system overview. Click on
Advanced Settings -> Environment Variables. Edit PATH and append
;C:\cygwin64\bin (i.e. paths separated by ;). Do not add spaces before
or after the semicolon. Now open up your command prompt and check that ls
outputs the list of files and directories.
Try out the clang command. It has been verified that for clang-3.5,
clang.exe is an executable, but for clang-3.7, the clang command is not
executable from the command prompt. To work around this issue, make a backup
of the original clang file at C:\cygwin64\bin\clang and copy the
executable clang-*.exe (where * is the version number) and name it
clang.exe. Now you should be able to run clang --version from within the
command prompt.
Download Vim from tuxproject.de. You
can either go down the 7z archive or the self-extracting route, but make sure
you remember where you installed it. Note the version of lua that your Vim was
compiled with. You can optionally add the directory where gvim.exe and
vim.exe lives to your PATH so that you can run vim from the command
prompt. Let's say we installed vim in C:\Program Files\Vim.
You need the lua DLL in order to use
neocomplete.vim. Download the
lua version stated in tuxproject.de so that you have matching versions.
Let me save you a few keystrokes: Lua Download
page. Get the DLL that's in the archive
that you downloaded and place it in the top-level directory of you vim
installation. In our case, it's C:\Program Files\Vim.
If you have your own configuration that's Windows-compatible, you can use it
easily. Let's say you cloned your dotfiles to ~/dotfiles in cygwin. In the
command prompt, link your vim configs to your home directory.
> mklink C:\Users\Foobar\.vimrc C:\cygwin64\home\foobar\.vimrc
> mklink C:\Users\Foobar\.gvimrc C:\cygwin64\home\foobar\.gvimrc
> mklink /D C:\Users\Foobar\.vim C:\cygwin64\home\foobar\.vimYou can use _vimrc instead of .vimrc and vimfiles instead of .vim, but
it makes it easier when configuring paths under .vim so I recommend the
traditional .vimrc and .vim.
My dotfiles can be found here, FWIW.
dein.vim is a Vim plugin manager that's currently being actively developed as a successor for neobundle.vim. Let's try it out!
Download dein.vim on cygwin.
$ git clone https://github.com/Shougo/dein.vim /cygdrive/c/Foobar/.cache/dein/repos/github.com/Shougo/dein.vimOr you can just download the zip file and extract it to
C:\Users\Foobar\.cache\dein\repos\github.com\Shougo\dein.vim. Of course, you
can change the location to whatever you like.
Here's a .vimrc that will get you started.
if &compatible
set nocompatible
endif
set runtimepath+=~/.cache/dein/repos/github.com/Shougo/dein.vim
set runtimepath+=~/.vim
set number
syntax on
call dein#begin(expand('~/.cache/dein'))
call dein#add('Shougo/dein.vim')
call dein#add('Shougo/vimproc.vim', {
\ 'build': 'make',
\ })
" Use only if lua is enabled and autoload when going into insert mode
call dein#add('Shougo/neocomplete.vim', {
\ 'depends': 'vimproc.vim',
\ 'if': has('lua'),
\ 'lazy': 1,
\ 'on_i': 1,
\ })
call dein#add('osyo-manga/vim-marching', {
\ 'depends': ['vimproc.vim', 'neocomplete.vim'],
\ 'lazy': 1,
\ 'on_ft': 'cpp',
\ })
call dein#end()
if dein#check_install()
call dein#install()
endif
filetype plugin indent on
augroup MyDeinAutoCmd
autocmd!
augroup END
" neocomplete.vim
if dein#tap('neocomplete.vim')
function! s:neocomplete_source() abort
let g:neocomplete#enable_at_startup = 1
let g:neocomplete#force_omni_input_patterns = {
\ 'cpp': '[^. *\t]\%(\.\|->\)\w*\|[A-Za-z>]\w*::\w*',
\ }
endfunction
function! s:neocomplete_post_source() abort
call neocomplete#initialize()
endfunction
execute 'autocmd MyDeinAutoCmd User' 'dein#source#' . g:dein#name
\ 'call s:neocomplete_source()'
execute 'autocmd MyDeinAutoCmd User' 'dein#source#' . g:dein#name
\ 'call s:neocomplete_post_source()'
endif
" marching.vim
if dein#tap('vim-marching')
function! s:marching_source() abort
let g:marching_enable_neocomplete = 1
let g:marching_clang_command = 'clang'
let g:marching#clang_command#options = {
\ 'cpp': '-std=c++11',
\ }
set updatetime=100
imap <C-x><C-o> <Plug>(marching_force_start_omni_complete)
endfunction
execute 'autocmd MyDeinAutoCmd User' 'dein#source#' . g:dein#name
\ 'call s:marching_source()'
endifGrab the latest binary of vimproc.vim in the
releases. Put this in
C:\Users\Foobar\.cache\dein\repos\github.com\Shougo\vimproc.vim\lib\. You might want to do this
after you run vim once with the above configurations.
Write a "Hello, World" program. If everything went well, you should see smart
completion pop up when typing std::.
There are so many things that you can configure. For example, you can use neoinclude.vim for header files completions, quickrun.vim for quickly running the code without getting out of vim, etc. etc...
Happy Vimming!
Naoki Mizuno
