Hidden gems inside your VIM Distribution

Have you ever looked into what comes with your VIM distribution?
To do so just :echo $VIMRUNTIME inside VIM and open that directory in your terminal.

Games and strange stuff

The $VIMRUNTIME directory holds a macros directory which contains useful and some strange stuff.

• A recent version of matchit.vim is available here.
  No need to use an external version just runtime macros/matchit.vim inside your .vimrc
• There's a Conway's Game Of Life implementation available:
  Start vim, then :runtime macros/life/life.vim and press g
• Tower of Hanoi anyone?
  :runtime macros/hanoi/hanoi.vim and again press g
• Maze solver. A little more involving to make it run:
  Open terminal and go to your $VIMRUNTIME
  cd macros/maze && make && ./maze > maze.out
  input 30 and press enter
  vim maze.out then :runtime macros/maze/maze_mac then g
  
• Menu in gvim for a lot of shell functions:
  :runtime macros/shellmenu.vim
  
• Text justification via :runtime macros/justify.vim then :Justify

Working with Git

VIM contains a filetype plugin for git commits (made by Tim Pope).
If you commit with VIM as your editor you can set ft=gitcommit and then use :DiffGitCached to generate a diff with your changes.

Also availabe is a useful plugin for handling interactive rebases with git. Insert the following into your .vimrc:

augroup vim_config
  autocmd FileType gitrebase call LoadGitrebaseBindings()
augroup END

fun! LoadGitrebaseBindings()
  nnoremap  P :Pick
  nnoremap  S :Squash
  nnoremap  C :Cycle
endfun

If you git rebase -i you can then use P, S or C to Pick, Squash or Cycle through the available options.

Have fun,
Frank

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