Understanding VimClojure startup errors on new installation

[Noah Zucker]

(Cross posted from Stack Overflow at the suggestion of Meikel Brandmeyer)

Vim version: 7.0.237
OS: CenOS 5.5

I am attempting to get vimclojure working for the first time. I am fairly new to vim plugins.  I'm having some problems (error messages below) and am looking for some hints at the least. Not much idea where to start.

I am trying to following the steps from How I tamed VimClojure as well as inspecting VimClojure-Easy

When I start vim, I am presented with the following error (occurs in both VimClojure 2.3.1 and 2.3.3, the later below):

    Error detected while processing /home/nzucker/.vim/bundle/vimclojure/autoload/vimclojure.vim:
    line  249:
    E475: Invalid argument: 1
    line  273:
    E475: Invalid argument: 2
    line  343:
    E475: Invalid argument: 1
    line  367:
    E475: Invalid argument: 2
    line  407:
    E475: Invalid argument: 2
    line  413:
    E475: Invalid argument: 7
    line  730:
    E475: Invalid argument: 1
    line  747:
    E475: Invalid argument: 2
    line  823:
    E475: Invalid argument: 8
    Press ENTER or type command to continue

(First error location: vimclojure.vim:249)

The plugin seems to partially work however. I have syntax highlighting. When I attempt to open a REPL with the <Leader>sr command, I get the following:

    Error detected while processing function vimclojure#ProtectedPlug..vimclojure#ReportError..6..3:
    line    1:
    E716: Key not present in Dictionary: _buffer
    E15: Invalid expression: "buffer! " . self._buffer
    Press ENTER or type command to continue

For what it's worth my (ugly) `.vimrc` is here:
https://github.com/noahlz/dotfiles/commit/d0df9d0c5500e1803981b959c7fdbf88114000c6


NOTE:
I am going to do the standard troubleshooting steps, i.e. try upgrading to latest vim, remove everything from my .vimrc and add back features one-by-one until I get the error, but I'm also looking for some guidance/resources on interpreting and correcting these sorts of error messages, should I encounter them again.

[Meikel Brandmeyer]

Hi,

I checked the line numbers from your error message and it seems like Vim has trouble to redefine a dictionary function, when the dictionary already contains a function of that name. Could you please try a newer version of Vim? Unfortunately I don't have such an old version of Vim around for testing. If you could try a newer version of Vim and report the results that would be great.

The repl problem looks like a follow-up issue: Since the dictionary function is not properly defined, the repl setup is not done correctly.

Regarding error message: I can't really give a hint. Sometimes it is relatively clear what's going on. Sometimes it's not. I try to give reasonable hints for anything which stems from the inner workings of VimClojure. In your case, I only have a suspicion based on what happens around the line numbers in your version. But that is just a guess. Vim is not always very helpful with its messages. The description of E475 is especially enlightening. :-P

Kind regards
Meikel

[Wolodja Wentland]

On Mon, Jul 02, 2012 at 06:23 -0700, Noah Zucker wrote:
> (Cross posted [1]from Stack Overflow at the suggestion of Meikel

> Brandmeyer)
>
> Vim version: 7.0.237
> OS: CenOS 5.5

Both CentOS and vim are quite old and I would strongly recommend to upgrade
both. It might be that your problems are due to this.

> I am attempting to get vimclojure working for the first time. I am fairly
> new to vim plugins.  I'm having some problems (error messages below) and
> am looking for some hints at the least. Not much idea where to start.

I see that you decided to use pathogen and I don't want to confuse you even
more, but I strongly recommend to use either vim-addon-manager [0] or vundle
[1] for plugin management. This is, naturally, not absolutely necessary, but I
just prefer them as they provide a more high-level approach to plugin
management than pathogen.

> I am trying to following the steps from [2]How I tamed VimClojure as well
> as inspecting [3]VimClojure-Easy

I see that both posts differ slightly in the way in which the nailgun server
is started. I personally use lein-tarsier and never had the need for anything
like:

--- snip ---
" Start vimclojure nailgun server (uses screen.vim to manage lifetime)
nmap <silent> <Leader>sc :execute "ScreenShell java -cp \"" . classpath . sep . vimclojureRoot . "/lib/*" . "\" vimclojure.nailgun.NGServer 127.0.0.1" <cr>
" Start a generic Clojure repl (uses screen.vim)
nmap <silent> <Leader>sC :execute "ScreenShell java -cp \"" . classpath . "\" clojure.main" <cr>
--- snip ---

I am not entirely sure how the approach above plays with dependencies that are
handled by leiningen and are found in the project's lib/ directory. I don't
have the impression that those are added to the CLASSPATH, which would
constitute a major difference between this approach and lein-tarsier. In
short: Use lein-tarsier (it works).
--
Wolodja <bab...@gmail.com>

4096R/CAF14EFC
081C B7CD FF04 2BA9 94EA 36B2 8B7F 7D30 CAF1 4EFC

[Dave Ray]

vimclojure-easy explicitly recommends lein-tarsier. The other method is older, more involved and explicitly redirects the reader to vimclojure-easy in the first sentence.  

Dave

[noahlz]

Thank you for the replies.

[Meikel Brandmeyer]

Hi,

Am 13.07.2012 um 18:08 schrieb noahlz:

> Thank you for the replies.

Did you find a solution?

Meikel

[noahlz]

Hello! My solution for now is "just use IntelliJ on my CentOS machine (with vim keybindings)" which is good enough. It seems that upgrading vim, etc. would require upgrading the OS -> full re-install which I can't be bothered with. :)

However, I'm setting up on an Ubuntu laptop and it seems to be going ok so far (interestingly a google search for a small issue I'm having actually took me back to this thread!). I'll let you know final results if when I get there.

[noahlz]

Clojure
user=> (println "hello world!")
hello world!
nil

All is working! Thanks for the help.

[Jeb Beich]

I've setup vim 7.3 on a few centos 5.5 boxes, by compiling from source. So I can verify that it is possible w/o upgrading everything. It was a bit of a pain, but it didn't take too long.