I've written about vim as an IDE before. In this case, however, in order to prepare for node hacking, and also in line with a recent discussion about IDE's on the node mailing list, I'm documenting here notes I made while getting geared up with gvim (macvim) for SSJS development with some of the more important plugins that were mentioned (you know, it's that "so how do I actually do this" moment) (this should all work fine on either MacBook Pro or Ubuntu/Linux):

First off, see Viva Vim 7! (installing on Ubuntu Dapper) .

Second off, see Konqueror with Midnight Commander theme on Ubuntu . Now we're all on the same page, with Konqueror (in all its variations) and Vim 7 installed.

Also assumed here is the installation of the ExuberantCtags package, so that ctags can be generated for ruby, php, python, perl, and a host of other languages (see ExuberantCtags) as well as the C language. On my Ubuntu box installation was straightforward with Synaptic.

The main interest here is using (and remembering how to use in between actual programming bouts: different projects hook you on different tool sets) Vim 7 as a lightweight alternative to Eclipse.

That may sound like a mouthful, but we'll see it is not an exaggeration.

Unfortunately, vim 7 didn't make it into the Dapper Ubuntu 6.06 LTS.

So the best way to install it without fighting with dependencies is to amend your apt-get sources.list file with the following line (works fine for me on Ubuntu Dapper, 6.06 LTS freshly installed October 2006):

deb http://www.freshnet.org/debian/ dapper/

Then go ahead and install (see below, and see below for amd64 (above repository of course won't work for amd64 installations)).

Thanks, Freshnet.it !

If you're using Synaptic, just hit Settings >> Repositories, then hit the Add button, then the Custom button and paste in the above "Apt line" repository info and hit "Add Channel". Then close the Software Preferences windows and hit the "Reload" button to update package info. And update the appropriate vim7 package you are looking for (vim perl, vim ruby, or whatever you are using).