Stack: Visual Studio 2017 - Resharper 2017 - VsVim 2.3

Work in progress! The guide highlights useful editing commands while programming using VsVim.

Vims power comes from chaining combinations together, and while much of vim is well documented it is often hard to learn effective combos, and with Resharper we have a lot more combos at our disposal. The purpose of this gudie is to document really good VsVim / Resharper editing techniques by leveraging various combos.

This guide ( currently ) assumes VsVim doesn't bind to any of the modifier keys ( like ctrl ) which leaves Resharpers and visual studio bindings as default. This is due to resharper having an awful lot of functionality bound to lots of different key combinations that rather than working out remapping to vim combinations I've tried to leave resharper pretty standard. This does mean certain Vim functionality is unavailble, however some of the more useful things are overcome through a custom .vsvimrc

If there are any editing scenarios in relation to C# coding not covered raise an issue, or, if you have a scenario you think would be good for the guide, raise a PR on the repository https://github.com/keithn/vsvimguide.git

This is largely down to personal preference, but by default, some things are slightly tricky to deal with and adaptions / compromises need to be made

This is where you can map keys to vim commands (it lives in your windows user home directory). VsVim allows you to bind things to visual studio, and by extension, resharper. The following are a number of useful bindings

nnoremap gd :vsc ReSharper.ReSharper_GotoDeclaration<CR>
set clipboard=unnamed
map ;; A;<Esc>
map ] :vsc ReSharper.ReSharper_GotoNextMethod<CR>
map [ :vsc ReSharper.ReSharper_GotoPrevMethod<CR>
map - <PageUp>
map = <PageDown>

this maps gd ( goto definition ) to resharpers version

it sets the windows clipboard to bind to vims default buffer it cuts and pastes to ( which is really useful if you use a clipboard manager like ditto )

It maps ;; to append a semi colon to the end of the line without going into insert mode. This is useful as much resharper / vim magic generates code for you while not in insert mode but leaves the code without the final semicolon.

it binds [ and ] to resharpers goto previous and next method. By default, in vim, this is previous and next section which has little use within visual studio.

it binds - and + to pageup and pagedown

There are a number of bindings which Visual Studio and vsvim can't change when it comes to resharper and pop up dialogs. In this repository there is a auto hot key script (vsvim.ahk) which binds the following keys

Caps Lock - Esc This is one of the most useful bindings as the Esc key is needed a lot and for many people they hardly ever use Caps Lock ALT-K - Up Arrow, this is for use in popup dialogs like any of R# goto dialogs ALT-J - Down Arrow

Set this script to run on startup.

The main reason for this guide is essentially how to use Vim effectively with visual studio and resharper. The key motivation to VsVim is to be able to leverage Vims powerful editing capabilites within Visual Studio, so we need to spend a lot of effort to get really effective with standard vim commands ( and sepecifically VsVim ). But often we step outside of Vim and make use of resharper / auto complete / refactorings / code generation / templates / Visual Studio hot keys to better leverage all the toys at our disposal

This isn't trying to be a beginners guide but just some general advice for beginners about how to make the switch without too much friction. Vim takes a while to get good at and much of the advice advocates enduring the pain until you get good enough, but you don't have to. You can go through a progression.

• It's ok to stay in insert mode, use arrow keys, and your mouse, everything will be semi normal
• Start coming out of insert mode to practice Vim things, hjkl to move around, w to move between words, dd to delete lines, c commands to change text like ciw ci" cw, and the corresponding delete commands diw dw
• Keep learning commands like the ones in this guide till you are using them by default
• Start challenging yourself to stay out of insert mode
• At this point you should start feeling Vim is a more productive way to edit and you'll naturally keep expanding your skills, keep looking at tips, often many of the combos won't occur to you even though you know what the commands do. Or you may find there is even a better combo than the current combo you use.

cw - changes the word from the cusor to the end of the word

ciw - changes the entire worth that the cursor is on

cf<char> - changes text until you find the chararcter , includes the find char

ct<char> - changes text until you find the charracter , but don't include the char

c<n>f<char> - same as previous cf but find the nth occurance of the char

c<n>t<char> - same as previous ct but find the nth occurance of the char

ci( - change text inside current brackets ( )

ci{ - change text inside current curly braces { }

ci' - change text inside current ' quotes

ci" - change text inside current " quotes

cit - change text inside current html/xml tag

r<char> - replaces the character under the cursor

<n>r<char> - replaces the next <n> characters from the cursor with <char>

R - overwrite mode / Replace characters

s - substitute, remove the character under cursor and enter insert mode

<n>s - remove the next <n> characters and enter insert mode

o - open ( leave in insert mode) a new line under current line with correct indenting

O - same as o, but open above

x - delete character

dd - delete line

u - undo

A - append to end of current line ( leaves in insert mode )

a - append after current cursor (leaves in insert mode )

h - cursor left

j - cursor down

k - cursor up

l - cursor down

H - put cursor at top of screen

M - put cursor in middle of screen

L - put cursor at bottom of screen

w - beginning of next word

e - end of next word

b - beginning of previous word, if in the middle of a word, it goes back to the beginning of that word

gd - goto defention ( use ontop of methods / classes etc )

zz - center current line in center of screen

* - search for word under cursor

m<char> - mark current location and store it in <char> if the letter is a Capital letter, then it works across files

`<char> - goto mark set in <char> if the letter is a capital letter it will jump to the file with the mark

Use it to nagigate to places faster

/ search forward, by itself repeats the last search but forwards

? search back, by itself repeats the last search but backwards

n find next, will go to the next forward or the next back ( depends on whether you used / or ?)

N find previous, will go to the previous forward or the previous back

From the .vsvimrc bindings

[ - Previous Method (triggers R#)

] - Next Method (triggers R#)

Assuming the Visual Studio key bindings are used

Ctrl+t - Navigrate to File

Alt+Ins - Generate Menu, allows you to generate code depending on current context

Ctrl+Alt+Enter - Format the current file ( never fight resharpers formatting, configure it if you don't like it)

Ctrl+r-o - Move class to another file

Ctrl+Alt+/ - Comment Out line of code / Selection

Alt+Enter - Context aware Actions / Quick fixes / transformations

Ctrl+Q - Quick Launch, allows you to search and run any command visual studio knows about, tells you if it has a key binding, and its menu location.

Alt+F-d-n - Add new project to solution

Alt+T-n-n - Manage Nuget Packages for Solution

Alt-Alt - Make auto complete dialogs disappear, super useful as by default esc is what's commonly used which will take you out of insert mode.

#Sources of Tips

https://youtrack.jetbrains.com/issue/RSRP-465176

http://vim.wikia.com/wiki/Vim_Tips_Wiki - so much gold here, but hard to find relevant nuggets

https://vimhelp.appspot.com/index.txt - definitive list of all Vim commands

http://carnackeys.com/ - Displays key combos on your screen

https://obsproject.com/ - Free open source Screen casting software

• Keith Nicholas