** VIM **

There exist a couple of plugins and settings for the VIM editor to aid python

development. If you only develop in Python, a good start is to set the default

settings for indentation and linewrapping to values compliant with PEP8::

With these settings newlines are inserted after 79 characters and indentation

is set to 4 spaces per tab. If you also use VIM for other languages, there is a

handy plugin at indent_, which handles indentation settings for python source

files.

Additionally there is also a handy syntax plugin at syntax_ featuring some

improvements over the syntax file included in VIM 6.1.

These plugins supply you with a basic environment for developing in Python.

However in order to improve the programming flow we also want to continually

check for PEP8 compliance and check syntax. Luckily there exist PEP8_ and

Pyflakes_ to do this for you. If your VIM is compiled with `+python` you can

also utilize some very handy plugins to do these checks from within the editor.

For PEP8 checking install vim-pep8_. Now you can map the vim function

`Pep8()` to any hotkey or action you want. Similarly for pyflakes you can

install vim-pyflakes_. Now you can map `Pyflakes()` like the PEP8 function and

have it called quickly. Both plugins will display errors in a quickfix list and

provide an easy way to jump to the corresponding line. A very handy setting is

calling these functions whenever a buffer is saved. In order to do this, enter

the following lines into your vimrc::

.. _indent: http://www.vim.org/scripts/script.php?script_id=974

.. _syntax: http://www.vim.org/scripts/script.php?script_id=790

.. _Pyflakes: http://pypi.python.org/pypi/pyflakes/

.. _vim-pyflakes: https://github.com/nvie/vim-pyflakes

.. _PEP8: http://pypi.python.org/pypi/pep8/

.. _vim-pep8: https://github.com/nvie/vim-pep8