How can I make the Sign Column show up all the time even if no Signs have been added to it?
Starting with Vim 7.4.2201, you can do:
:set signcolumn=yes
Cp. :help 'signcolumn'
. For older Vim versions, you have to define a dummy sign and place it into the current buffer:
:sign define dummy
:execute 'sign place 9999 line=1 name=dummy buffer=' . bufnr('')
For vim-gitgutter specifically, you can also set the following variable in your ~/.vimrc
:
let g:gitgutter_sign_column_always = 1
UPDATE
The plugin will now issue a warning to remove the above line and instead use:
set signcolumn="yes"
While the little dance defining a sign and placing it works ok, a more elegant alternative that works well for me is:
autocmd BufRead,BufNewFile * setlocal signcolumn=yes
And if there are certain filetypes that are not supposed to have the column:
autocmd FileType tagbar,nerdtree setlocal signcolumn=no