Previously, I discussed using vim and screen with automagic titles.

The great part about working with vim and screen is that I can work from anywhere with minimal setup, and when working remotely I can pick up the cursor exactly where I left it — I never have to worry about a remote terminal disconnecting.

I tend to avoid vim plugins as I like having a minimal setup on different hosts, I occasionally make an exception for NERDTree, but I find the default netrw easily workable. I keep my .vimrc and other dotfiles in github so I’m always a git clone away from getting my environment setup (in Linux, cygwin, OSX, etc).

With this in mind, I would like an easier way to navigate files in a project and if possible avoid non-standard vim plugins.

One of the most effective approaches I have found using the default (no plugins) vim is the combination of tags and tabs.

Tag files are generated by ctags (typically from exuberant ctags), which then vim can use as a keyword index into your source tree for any given project.

Generating Tags

I prefer to keep a single “tags” file at the root of each project directory, typically as follows,

$ ctags -R .

This will create a “tags” file in the current directory. For larger codebases these can get surprisingly large, but they are usually fast to generate. To manage these files you may consider using git hooks on

Telling vim about Tags

In vim you can load as many tag files as you like, the command is,

:set tags+=tags

where “tags” is the filename of the tags file.

The problem is, you won’t want to type this every time you open vim, so add the following to your .vimrc,

set tags+=tags;$HOME

By adding the “;$HOME” to the set tags command, this will simply look for a “tags” file in the current working directory, and if it doesn’t find one it will look in the parent directory and keep looking for a tags file all the way back to “$HOME”. So if you’re 10 directories deep within $HOME then it would search up to 10 directories looking for a “tags” file. You can replace $HOME with any base directory, in my case I keep all project source code in my $HOME directory.

Using Tags

Typing :tag text will search for files with the exact tag name, or you can use :tag /text to search for any tag that matches “text”.

By default, vim opens the new files in a tag stack, you can use Ctrl-T to go back to the previous file — alternatively you can navigate the files through the normal buffer commands, e.g.,

list open buffers
:ls

switch to a different buffer (from list)
:b #

unload (delete) a buffer
:bd #

You can also use put your cursor on the word you want to search and press Ctrl-] to go the file that matches the selected text, then use Ctrl-T to jump back. If you want to see all the files that match a tag, you can use :tselect text

I find navigating a tag stack and maintaining multiple buffers is a bit cumbersome, this is where tabs can really help out.

Using Tabs

Once you’re in vim you can open a new tab with :tabedit {file} or :tabe {file} which will open the optionally specified file in a new tab (or open a new blank tab if no file is specified). Usually I use,

:tabe .

to open a new tab with the file browser in the current working directory.

With multiple tabs open you can use gt and gT to toggle thru the open tabs, or {i}gt to go to the i-th tab (starting at 1). You can re-order tabs using tabm # to a move a tab to a new position (starting at 0).

Most importantly, tabs work great with mouse enabled, simply click on a tab as you would intuitively expect, drag the tabs to re-order, or click the “X” in the upper-right to close.

Tabs meet Tags

I find the default tags behavior slightly cumbersome as I end up navigating the tag stack through multiple buffers open in one window.

When searching tags I want the file to always open in a new tab, or at least to open in a vertical split.

I have added the following to my .vimrc

map <C-\> :tab split<CR>:exec("tag ".expand("<cword>"))<CR>
map <C-]> :vsp <CR>:exec("tag ".expand("<cword>"))<CR>

This will effectively remap Ctrl-] to open the matching file in a vertical split. I can then close the vertical split or even move it to a new tab using Ctrl-w T.

However, mostly I use Ctrl-\ to open the matching file in a new tab.

Between tab and tag navigation I find this a very powerful way to manage even very large projects with default vim (rather than rely on an IDE).

Careful with Splits

One interesting thing about splits (vertical and horizontal, that is, :sp and :vsp) is that they will exist entirely within a tab window. In other words, a split occurs within only one tab.

You can close a split using Ctrl-w q, and if you need to navigate through multiple splits you can either use the mouse or Ctrl-w and then an arrow key (or h,j,k,l if you prefer).

In any given split, you can always move that file to a new tab using Ctrl-w T