Grab some text and "send" it to a GNU Screen / tmux / whimrepl session.
VIM ---(text)---> screen / tmux / whimrepl
Presumably, your screen contains something interesting like, say, a Clojure REPL. But if it can receive typed text, it can receive it from vim-slime.
The reason you're doing this? Because you want the benefits of a REPL and the benefits of using Vim (familiar environment, syntax highlighting, persistence ...).
Read the blog post.
I recommend installing pathogen.vim, and then simply copy and paste:
cd ~/.vim/bundle
git clone git://github.com/jpalardy/vim-slime.git
If you like it the hard way, copy plugin/slime.vim from this repo into ~/.vim/plugin.
By default, GNU Screen is assumed, you don't have to do anything. If you want to be explicit, you can add this line to your .vimrc:
let g:slime_target = "screen"
Because Screen doesn't accept input from STDIN, a file is used to pipe data
between Vim and Screen. By default this file is set to $HOME/.slime_paste.
The name of the file used can be configured through a variable:
let g:slime_paste_file = "$HOME/.slime_paste"
This file is not erased by the plugin and will always contain the last thing you sent over. If this is a problem, I recommend you switch to tmux.
When you invoke vim-slime for the first time (see below), you will be prompted for more configuration.
screen session name
This is what you put in the -S flag, or one of the line of "screen -ls".
screen window name
This is the window number or name, zero-based.
Tmux is not the default, to use it you will have to add this line to your .vimrc:
let g:slime_target = "tmux"
When you invoke vim-slime for the first time (see below), you will be prompted for more configuration.
tmux socket name
This is what you put in the -L flag, it will be "default" if you didn't put anything.
tmux target pane
":" means current window, current pane (a reasonable default)
":i" means the ith window, current pane
":i.j" means the ith window, jth pane
"h:i.j" means the tmux session where h is the session identifier (either session name or number), the ith window and the jth pane
By default STDIN is used to pass the text to tmux.
If you experience issues with this you may be able to work around them
by configuring slime to use a file instead:
let g:slime_paste_file = "$HOME/.slime_paste"
This file is not erased by the plugin and will always contain the last thing you sent over. If this behavior is undesired one alternative is to use a temporary file:
let g:slime_paste_file = tempname()
If you do not want vim-slime to prompt for every buffer, you can set a default configuration
let g:slime_default_config = {"socket_name": "default", "target_pane": "1"}
If this default config is not appropriate for a given buffer, you can call :SlimeConfig
to reset it.
whimrepl is also not the default, to use it you will have to add this line to your .vimrc:
let g:slime_target = "whimrepl"
When you invoke vim-slime for the first time (see below), you will be prompted for more configuration.
whimrepl server name
This is the name of the whimrepl server that you wish to target. whimrepl displays that name in its banner every time you start up an instance of whimrepl.
By default, the current paragraph will be sent. This is equivalent to typing vip. If you (visually) select text, that will be sent over:
C-c, C-c --- the same as slime
You can just hold Ctrl and double-tap c.
There will be a few questions, as to where you want to send your text, and the answers will be remembered. If you need to reconfigure:
C-c, v --- mnemonic: "variables"