Command-T 1.2 released

I’ve just released version 1.2 of the Command-T plug-in, a powerful, open source file and buffer-navigation plug-in inspired by the "Command-T" feature in TextMate.

What’s changed since the 1.1b2 release

This is a minor feature release which adds a new option, g:CommandTMatchWindowReverse, which allows you to reverse the order of results in the match listing window. This can be useful for people who anchor the match window to the bottom of their screen, and want the "top" (ie. best) result to actually appear at the bottom, where it will remain in a fixed position right above the prompt. Thanks to Steven Moazami for the patch.

Other patches also came from Daniel Hahler (documentation fixes) and Victor Hugo Borja (packaging as a RubyGem). This later one particularly interested me, because it shows people using Command-T in ways that I never imagined. So, Command-T continues to be a Vim plug-in, but the search algorithm is now also available via a RubyGem, which means that other applications can make use of it in a fairly straightforward manner.

As always, a full change-log appears under HISTORY in the documentation, and you can explore the commits in the release here. (Note: the integrated repository browser that I’m linking to here is still relatively new and doesn’t have a full feature set yet.)

Installation

Command-T is a combination of C, Ruby and Vim’s built-in scripting language, which means that you need not only Ruby and a suitable C compiler on your system, but you also have to make sure you use compatible versions. That is, you can’t link your Vim against Ruby 1.9.2 and Command-T against Ruby 1.8.7 without things going "Boom!". For some reason, people love playing with different Ruby versions, via RVM and other means, and this has generated no small number of tickets in the issue tracker.

Windows is the worst platform of all, unsurprisingly. Getting Ruby, Vim and Command-T working together on Windows is similar in difficulty to transmuting lead into gold; if anything, transmuting may be easier.

So, if you’re unfortunate enough to be using Windows, or if you’re the sort that likes to play with different versions of Ruby, all I can do is encourage you to read the documentation very, very carefully — I’ve done my best to make it accurate and comprehensive — stick to the recommended, known-working versions, and maybe watch the installation screencasts on the Command-T product page.

Pathogen users

$ cd path/to/your/pathogen/bundle # probably ~/.vim/bundle
$ git clone git://git.wincent.dev/command-t.git
$ cd command-t
$ rake make

And in Vim:

:call pathogen#helptags()

See the docs for more info on installing (and updating) Command-T via Pathogen.

Everybody else

• Download the vimball from the Command-T product page (or www.vim.org, if you prefer)
• Open the vimball archive in vim, and do :so % to unpack it
• cd ~/.vim/ruby/command-t && ruby extconf.rb && make

Screencasts, donations and source code

If you’re a Vim user check out the screencasts and give the plug-in a try. If you’d like to support development you can use the donations page to make a donation, or consider submitting a patch for the project (the source code can be browsed here).