capture output of a vim command into a quickfix windows without freezing vim
FlashBurn
I have mapped my make and setup my quickfix window to work with it. However whenever I execute make, I have to wait till it finishes. Is there a way in Vim to execute make, see make target execution as if it is being executed in a shell, capture the output, and then navigate this output?
Any help is appreciated.
Gary Johnson
can't run a command in the foreground of one window while editing in
another window.
I looked at ":help remote.txt" but didn't see anything there that
would do what you want, but I don't use the client-server
functionality so I could easily be wrong about that.
The easiest "solution" is to run your make command in a different
Vim instance.
Another approach is to run make in the background and send its
output to file. Then, when that make is done, you can use :cfile
command to open that file in a quickfix window.
To know when your background make is done, you can have it echo a
message to its stdout, stderr or /dev/tty, which unfortunately
messes up your display, or you can use a Unix command such as
xmessage to display a message in an X window. One nice thing about
using xmessage is that you can be working in a different workspace
from the one in which you ran make and still be informed when make
is done.
HTH,
Gary
Marc Weber
You may want to look at github.com/MarcWeber/vim-addon-async which is
using github.com/MarcWeber/vim-addon-background-cmd which is running a
background shell which calls back into Vim to tell it "job is ready"
by using client-server feature which in turn requires X (or use vim nox
patch)
Alternative solutions exist which use Vim's idle event to poll for
updates. See list of related projects in github.com/MarcWeber/vim-addon-async
which also lists yet another Vim patch (terminal version only).
The async implementation provides a similar API for VimL plugins, but is
also using the vim-addon-background-cmd way calling back into Vim using
client-server. For quickfix I don't use -async because its causing a
noticable delay IMHO.
There is still one difference: Emacs updates a grep /compile list while
you can continue editing. vim-addon-async, vimproc, .. are vim like
solutions.
For an older version of Vim there is als a thread patch which allows to
run a terminal in vim, or see ConqueTerm.
While the order of projects listed here might be biased (cause I'm the
author), I still hope that the overall overview is kind of complete.
Marc Weber
Ben Fritz
>
> I looked at ":help remote.txt" but didn't see anything there that
>
> would do what you want, but I don't use the client-server
>
> functionality so I could easily be wrong about that.
>
>
Not directly, but you can call arbitrary Vim functions with --remote-expr
>
> The easiest "solution" is to run your make command in a different
>
> Vim instance.
>
>
>
> Another approach is to run make in the background and send its
>
> output to file. Then, when that make is done, you can use :cfile
>
> command to open that file in a quickfix window.
>
>
Yes, I'd suggest this approach. But you don't need to do the :cfile manually.
http://vim.wikia.com/wiki/Execute_external_programs_asynchronously_under_Windows gives a method on Windows for async grep commands. The idea would be the same for "make" commands.
You shell out to start a command in a background process that will do the compile, AND when that compile is done will use --remote-expr to tell Vim to load a file with :cfile.
There are also some plugins out there to simplify the task I think.
Note, the quickfix window will not update dynamically as the compile happens. But it will allow you to keep using Vim while it is going on.
