Stacking Code

I've been relearning Vim over the last couple of weeks. I love it as an editor, but I still find myself using Visual Studio to create files, which adds them to projects for me; and to use ReSharper, for finding types, inserting namespaces, etc.

So once a file is created or a type is found in Visual Studio, what's the easiest way to edit it in Vim? These two links have some great stuff:

• Integrate gVim with Visual Studio
• Vim To and From Visual Studio

The short answer is to define Vim as an external tool and give it a shortcut. One thing I would add though... in the arguments, prefix the server name with g. This forces gVim to take focus and may save an alt-tab.

The arguments are --servername gVimualStudio --remote-silent +"call cursor($(CurLine), $(CurCol))" "$(ItemPath)".

The server name tells gVim to use a named instance, which is useful once you have a few files open. The --remote-silent argument sends a command (marked with +) after the file is open. The call cursor command moves the cursor to the right spot in the file. $(CurLine), $(CurCol), $(ItemPath) and $(SolutionDir) are all Visual Studio variables which get converted to values before execution.

See these links for more information:

• Vim Documentation: Remote
• Arguments for External Tools

As Kevin Berridge suggested, I mapped Vim to ctrl-shift-v, ctrl-shift-v. But alt-t, v will also work thanks to the ampersand in &Vim above.