fireplace.vim

There's a REPL in fireplace, but you probably wouldn't have noticed if I hadn't told you. Such is the way with fireplace.vim. By the way, this plugin is for Clojure.

Installation

First, set up cider-nrepl. (If you skip this step, fireplace.vim will make do with eval, which mostly works.)

Install Fireplace using your favorite package manager, or use Vim's built-in package support:

mkdir -p ~/.vim/pack/tpope/start
cd ~/.vim/pack/tpope/start
git clone https://tpope.io/vim/fireplace.git
vim -u NONE -c "helptags fireplace/doc" -c q

You might also want salve.vim for assorted static project support.

Features

This list isn't exhaustive; see the :help for details.

Transparent setup

Fireplace.vim talks to nREPL. With Leiningen and Boot, it connects automatically using the .nrepl-port file created when you run lein repl or boot repl. If you are starting nREPL some other way, run :Connect and enter the host and port. You can connect to multiple instances of nREPL for different projects, and it will use the right one automatically. ClojureScript support is just as seamless with Piggieback.

Oh, and if you don't have an nREPL connection, installing salve.vim lets it fall back to using java clojure.main for some of the basics, using a class path based on your Leiningen config. It's a bit slow, but a two-second delay is vastly preferable to being forced out of my flow for a single command, in my book.

Not quite a REPL

You know that one plugin that provides a REPL in a split window and works absolutely flawlessly, never breaking just because you did something innocuous like backspace through part of the prompt? No? Such a shame, you really would have liked it.

I've taken a different approach in fireplace.vim. cq (Think "Clojure Quasi-REPL") is the prefix for a set of commands that bring up a command-line window — the same thing you get when you hit q: — but set up for Clojure code.

cqq prepopulates the command-line window with the expression under the cursor. cqc gives you a blank line in insert mode.

Evaluating from the buffer

Standard stuff here. :Eval evaluates a range (:%Eval gets the whole file), :Require requires a namespace with :reload (:Require! does :reload-all), either the current buffer or a given argument. :RunTests kicks off (clojure.test/run-tests) and loads the results into the quickfix list.

There's a cp operator that evaluates a given motion (cpp for the innermost form under the cursor). cm and c1m are similar, but they only run clojure.walk/macroexpand-all and macroexpand-1 instead of evaluating the form entirely.

Any failed evaluation loads the stack trace into the location list, which can be easily accessed with :lopen.

Navigating and Comprehending

I was brand new to Clojure when I started this plugin, so stuff that helped me understand code was a top priority.

• :Source, :Doc, and :FindDoc, which map to the underlying clojure.repl macro (with tab complete, of course).

• K is mapped to look up the symbol under the cursor with doc.

• [d is mapped to look up the symbol under the cursor with source.

• [<C-D> jumps to the definition of a symbol (even if it's inside a jar file).

• gf, everybody's favorite "go to file" command, works on namespaces.

Where possible, I favor enhancing built-ins over inventing a bunch of <Leader> maps.

Omnicomplete

Because why not? It works in the quasi-REPL too.

FAQ

Why does it take so long for Vim to startup?

That's either classpath.vim or salve.vim.

Self-Promotion

Like fireplace.vim? Follow the repository on GitHub and vote for it on vim.org. And if you're feeling especially charitable, follow tpope on Twitter and GitHub.

License

Copyright © Tim Pope. Distributed under the same terms as Vim itself. See :help license.