Syntastic and split view handling in Vim

Question

Recently, I started using syntastic, as it eases up development quite a bit.

The only thing that realy bothers me is how it deals with split views.

I use the NERDtree plugin as well, and whenever I open another file in a vsplit view, the following happens:

---------------------------------------------------------
|        |                   |                          |
|NERDTree|    file           |                          |
|        |                   |       file               |
|        |                   |                          |
|        |--------------------                          |
|        |   syntastic       |                          |
---------------------------------------------------------
|                                                       |
|                 syntastic                             |
|                                                       |
---------------------------------------------------------

Is there a way to get rid of the small additional syntastic tile?

I would rather have two small tiles (one for each file), or only one tile displaying information for the currently active file tile.

Good drawing, clear and impressive! – Francis Niu Mar 21 '17 at 16:33 — Francis Niu, Mar 21 '17 at 16:33

score 3 · Answer 1 · answered Sep 04 '15 at 14:24

NerdTree often gets in the way of a a good split/window workflow. So have you thought about not using NerdTree?

A few problems with NerdTree:

Wasted space. How often do you need look at your file structure? 10% of the time? Less?
Vim has no concept of a "Project Drawer". Meaning NerdTree goes to great lengths to emulate "Project Drawer" behavior and ultimately fails.
Splits navigation - Makes <c-w>t much less useful. Often causing more window navigation commands to be used compared to other workflows.
NerdTree doesn't play well when rearranging splits. Create some splits then do <c-w>J or <c-w>H. See how it messed up your layout. This is the case you are having with syntastic.

The Vim Way

As laid out in the Vimcasts post, Oil and vinegar - split windows and the project drawer, Vim prefers to just open a file explorer when you need it then switch away from it when it isn't needed. You can user NerdTree in this fashion too, just forget the alway on file explorer bit. There are other ways of opening files in vim:

Use file completion, via <tab>, with commands like :e and :sp
Use <c-d> instead of <tab> to get a list of completions
:e and :sp commands take globs. e.g. :e *.c and :e foo/**/bar.c
:find and setup 'path' and 'suffix' options
Ctags or cscope to jump to tags
gf will go to a file under the cursor
Look into fuzzy finders like CtrlP, Command-T, or Unite
Create project specific navigation via Projectionist (Rails is a good example of this)

Personally, I would find a good fuzzy file finder start fading NerdTree out of your workflow.

Vim is split happy. Make sure you use splits as effectively as you can. There are many split commmands, see :h opening-window. Better yet read the whole :h window help file, there are many treasures in there.

I am getting the same issues with Syntastic, even when not using NerdTree. The moment I start splitting buffers and closing splits, I am left with orphaned quickfix buffers etc. A very similar picture to the one illustrated in the question above. Any solid solution to this problem? — mbilyanov, Nov 16 '15 at 12:07
@symbolix Syntastic is likely using the Location List instead of the Quickfix list. The location list is very similar to the quickfix list however it is bound to a specific window. If you close that window then it will likely orphan the location list window. You may be able to use the a buffer event like `BufHidden` to call `:lclose` e.g `autcmd BufHidden * lclose`. Personally I rarely open the location list window. I use command like `:ll`, `:lnext`, and `:lprev` to view my errors. — Peter Rincker, Nov 17 '15 at 18:24
Thanks for the suggestion. I was about to embark on writing some kind of a function that will take care of closing the buffer and while doing that also running some kind of a Syntastic function to reset Syntastic and initiate `:lclose.` is that a good idea? Any further suggestions? Thanks. — mbilyanov, Nov 17 '15 at 23:17

Syntastic and split view handling in Vim

1 Answers1

The Vim Way

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