Scala made me change the way I use vim, not only because relying on LSP for code navigation (previously gtags via gen_tags), but because the projects’ directory structure is way more complex than what I used to have in Python.
I used to rely on plain :ed filenameto open files, and then change buffers by just using :b name<TAB> (listing occasionally with :ls and selecting by number with :b number). But enter Scala and, for example, in my Gemini server the code lives in server/src/net/usebox/gemini/server/.
So I ended installing NERDTree and, although I have it always closed and only display the file browser when I need to open a file that I can’t reach immediately by using LSP navigation, it changed the way I work.
For a while I had a partial solution via the :find command. By setting this in my .vimrc:
set path=$PWD/**
In this way :find will search in all sub-directories, for example I can do:
:find filename<TAB><TAB>
But this is far from ideal. It kind of works, but very slowly and is not smart at all, so you get a lot of guff when it tries to find files by scanning all subdirectories (and when you want to open filename.scala you may find that filename.class gets in the way).
Why I didn’t use –or know– the awesome fzf? I can’t tell, but I installed it last night and I’m in love!
Not that I’m going to get rid of NERDTree, but I suspect I’ll use it less and less, because as Tom MacWright puts it in the return of fancy tools:
[…] This is obviously not the future of coding: shouldn’t I be navigating the source tree in 3D like in Jurassic Park? Sure, but the names of things, their functionality, and how it all fits together should be things that exist in one’s mind, not just in a computer.
That resonated with me, because that’s exactly what I was doing in Python, so I tried that fzf tool that he mentions in the post. I guess late is better than never.