Command-T 1.8 released

I just released version 1.8 of Command-T, the powerful, open source file and buffer-navigation plug-in inspired by the "Command-T" feature in TextMate.

What’s new

This release speeds up the Watchman scanner by teaching Command-T to speak the Watchman binary protocol (instead of the JSON protocol). This makes it almost twice as fast as before. Additionally, minor fixes to the build process were made which should ease some difficulties people were having on some platforms.

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. You may prefer to view the commits on GitHub.)

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 1.9.3 and Command-T against Ruby 1.8.7 without things going "Boom!". For some reason, people love playing with different Ruby versions, via RVM, rbenv 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

Beware that vimballs aren’t the most robust packaging system; if your vimball doesn’t extract completely on the first try (ie. if only some of the files are extracted), just try again.

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).