License: WTFPL, see http://sam.zoy.org/wtfpl/COPYING
See also http://www.vim.org/scripts/script.php?script_id=4659
If you use the build-system Waf, this plugin will assist you by providing a comfortable sidebar menu which lists major Waf commands and all existing build-targets of your current project. You can select one or more targets from the list for building.
See Wiki for a screenshot of the Buildmenu plugin.
This script is still quite young and far from being feature complete.
Planned features for future versions:
- user can add own args to the waf command-line for building
- quick-help in the style of NERDTree (when pressing ?)
- support of other build systems like SCons and GNU Make (if feasible)
So far this plugin merely works with the Waf build-system.
With Waf it is very easy for this plugin to provide a list of build-targets, because this build-system provides a command line argument to list all targets:
$ ./waf list
It seems most other buildsystems do provide a feature like that.
To toggle the sidebar build menu (see screenshot) you should define your own key-mapping. See section "Mappings". In the sidebar menu you can select (and unselect) one or more of the listed build-targets by pressing Space. The selected targets are marked in a different color for visualization. For each selection the Waf buildcommand for building those targets is shown in a preview window on the top of the current tab. The build command e.g. looks like this:
./waf --targets=common,unittest1,unitest2
To start building the selected targets, just hit Enter while your cursor has focus on the buildmenu target list.
By default this plugin only executes the Waf command "./waf list" once when the sidebar menu is opened for the first time in the vim session (to obtain the list of build-targets). When closing and re-opening the menu, this command is not executed again and the list of build-targets stays the same. You can press 'R' (for "refresh") in the menu to execute "./waf list" again.
Just place the file buildmenu.vim in your ~/.vim/plugin/ directory and the file buildmenu.txt in your ~/.vim/doc/ directory.
For more comfortable handling of vim plugins the use of the plugin pathogen is recommended. In that case you merely need to create a clone of the buildmenu git repository in directory ~/.vim/bundle/buildmenu. See https://github.com/tpope/vim-pathogen for details.
Then choose a key-mapping to toggle the buildmenu plugin (see section below).
To index the vim internal help page of the plugin buildmenu, enter this command in vim
:helptags ~/.vim/doc
(When using pathogen, just enter :Helptags instead.)
Preconditions that must be met for Buildmenu to work properly:
The Waf binary must exist on your system.
The vim option makeprg must specify this Waf binary. To do that place a line like the following one in your .vimrc file:
:set makeprg=./waf
The Waf build system by default expects the user to place the Waf binary in the root directory of his/her code project, together with a wscript file. This is why the example .vimrc line above sets makeprg to './waf'. If your Waf binary is located in another path, then you need to set makeprg to this path.
Nevertheless for Waf (and this plugin) to work properly, the current working directory (:pwd) must be the root directory of your code project, which also contains the root makefile for the Waf buildsystem, which is usually named wscript. So either start vim in the root directory of your project or use the vim command :cd to change into that directory.
An error message will be shown if one of these preconditions is not met and you try to open the Buildmenu.
To create your own key-mapping to toggle the Buildmenu add a line like the following to your .vimrc file:
map <YOURMAPPEDKEY> <Plug>BuildmenuToggle
Example: Choosing to map the key F4:
map <F4> <Plug>BuildmenuToggle
If you did not (yet) set any mapping like that, this plugin assigns the key sequence "bm" to toggle the Buildmenu. By default Leader maps to typing the backslash key ''. You can change that by setting the variable mapleader accordingly. See vim help for details.
Mappings in the sidebar menu:
select or unselect a build-target from the list. the target is highlighted in a different color to visualize your choice
start building your selected build-targets with Waf. The resulting build command could e.g. look like this:
./waf --targets=common,unittest1,unitest2
If you did not select any target so far, then the resulting build command will not specify any targets, which for Waf means 'make all':
./waf
The build command will be added to the ex command history of Vim. So you can easily execute it again by pressing ":" and the cursor up key.
Refresh list of build-targets by pressing R. The script will call './waf list' again to refresh the list.
You find further details in Vim's online help when entering
:help buildmenu
Or open the help file here on GitHub in my repository: ./doc/buildmenu.txt.