Using Vim instead of (or with) Xcode for iOS development

Developing for iOS or Mac with Vim can be really powerful and fast, especially if you use TDD or want quick feedback.

But it takes a bit of finagling to get it working. The few important things you need to know are:

• Use the xcodebuild command-line tool to run your build and units from some vimscript.
• Use the clang_complete plugin to give you full code completion from within vim.
• Use the ios.vim and cocoa.vim plugins for navigation.

This is my preferred method of working. In fact, I wrote the ios.vim plugin to make this easier for more people.

I've been there already...

I love vim and regularly use it in my day-by-day C++ development on *nix platforms, but I also like all of Xcode's features which, specially with latest Xcode >= 4.3 and clang backend, give a real plus in terms of auto-completion and symbol referencing.

I think I've found the optimal solution with the great (although not officially supported by Apple) XVim plugin.

Hoping that future Xcode upgrades won't break it (it's still working fine with latest developers' previews of 4.5), this really allows you to keep your fingers moving as you've learned doing in Vim while working with Xcode, which as I said, is for me the optimal solution.

Vim and XCode will co-exist quite well together provided that you aren't trying to edit the same files in Vim and the XCode editor at the same time. If you do then each will give you a warning about the file being modified externally. The terminal version of Vim is a little easier to live with in this particular respect: it will only warn you when you try to save the file, asking are you sure, whereas MacVim, and the XCode editor, will warn you each time you return to the file.

XCode does allow you to select an external application when you open files, by file type. In XCode Preferences, go to the File Types tab, and then file->text->sourcecode. Preferred Editor can be set to an external program such as MacVim; note that Emacs should be already listed as a selection: when Emacs is selected XCode launches Terminal.app with Emacs in a terminal. This Preferred Editor setting has the problem that you'll get a new window with each opened file, which may not match your workflow.

Vim's remote feature might prove useful here, see :help remote. With a little work, and the above Preferred Editor preference, one should be able to send the file to be edited to any instance of Vim, including an existing Vim running within an xterm. I seem to recall that Emacs provides something similar.

But none of this precludes you from using Vim without setting Preferred Editor: just open and edit your project files in Vim as you would normally.

Your workflow might be to use Vim for editing code, and switch to XCode for building the project, but Vim can also run the same build tools that XCode uses, and with a little more work you'll even be able to jump to the lines with errors. XCode relies on gdb for debugging, which can also be used quite well with Vim, via plugin.

Of course Vim can't be expected to replace something like Interface Builder, but just about every other aspect of iOS dev can be achieved with a Vim-only solution.

Or just use Vim to edit your code faster, and continue to use XCode for the rest.

Even thought MacVim with YouCompleteMe is my main environment for development on OSX, there are tasks I prefer to do in XCode, like debugging and profiling. For these scenarios I use XVim which adds VIM editing capabilities to XCode.

On XCode 5.1 XVim crashed quite a lot. But it progressed and it now works quite well with XCode 6 so far. But you only get a subset of VIM this way, e.g. you can't split the editor to view two files at the same time. You can enable/disable it quite easy with Shift-Command-X.

(Sorry to post this as answer and not as a comment, but the reputation-system of stackoverflow did not made it possible for me)