Command-T 1.0b released

I’ve just released version 1.0b of the Command-T plug-in for Vim. This is a powerful, open source file-navigation plug-in inspired by the "Command-T" feature in TextMate.

What’s new

This release includes a workaround for a crippling bug in Vim 7.3 on some platforms (if you’ve tried Command-T on such a platform, you’ll definitely know about the issue) and fixes one "polish" issue (eating up a buffer number each time you use Command-T).

As always, a full change-log appears under HISTORY in the documentation.

The 1.0 milestone

I started Command-T back in February this year and within a few days had a working implementation which I posted about here. The source code was always out in the open, but I published the first "official" release (version 0.1) to the plug-in’s page at vim.org on 22 March 2010. Since then, I’ve used it heavily every day and it has enjoyed fairly good take up by Vim users out there.

It didn’t take long to get to a point where I considered it stable enough and feature-complete enough to be considered for 1.0 release. But I held off because installing it was sometimes a pain.

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.

I’ve come to the point where I realize that these installation difficulties are never going to go away, and they shouldn’t hold up a 1.0 release. So here it is: 1.0b, which I’ll follow up with 1.0 proper within the next week or three if I don’t hear any reports of Command-T-induced poisoning or explosions.

And as far as installing goes: 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 — and maybe watch the installation screencasts on the Command-T product page.

Other than that, I hope you have fun with Command-T.

Where to get it

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.