Reduce Context Switching in VIM

When editing code, switching between files causes context switching. Anything that reduces this will increase focus.

For example, you might be in some file and want to go to the related test, or you may be looking at a Pull Request and want to open all it’s related files. You have to start thinking about what the file is called or where it might be. This should be easy.

Well now it is..

I’ve been experimenting with different ways of accomplishing this, let me share them with you.

Open related test

For alternating between code and tests, I use rails.vim. It provides a helpful command :A to open alternate file, I map it to ,..

You can map it in your .vimrc with noremap <Leader>. :A<CR>

Chaining VIM

Cool things happen when you chain vim together with other commands like git.

A common pattern is to use vim -O $(a-command), let me explain:

• vim is the command, could be anything, i.e. emacs
• -O opens a list of files in vertical split mode, i.e. vim -O file1.txt file2.txt
• $(a-command) can be any command that returns a list of files. bash will expand it as a giant string i.e. vim -O $(find .) would open all files in current dir

Chaining VIM with GIT

You can find all your uncommitted changees with git ls-files -m. If you chain it with vim vim -O $(git ls-files -m), you alias it and you’ll be opening files in double-time.

But wait… you can do the same for opening the last commit, or opening all files modified in this branch. Sky is the limit.

Useful aliases

Here are some aliases:

# ~/.bash_aliases
#
# open all dirty files
alias mods='vim -O $(git ls-files -m)'

# open all files modified in last commit in split view
alias amend='vim -O $(git diff-tree --no-commit-id --name-only -r HEAD)'

# open all files modified in current branch in split view
alias amend-branch='vim -O $(git diff --name-only $(git merge-base --fork-point origin/master)..)'