20 Nov 2012
Bufexplorer - my new favourite add-on for vim.
Why do I like it? It allows you to emulate the buffer list feature of emacs, as well as switch between horizontal/vertical buffer splits and find recently edited files. All this can already be done with vim buffers, but bufexplorer makes it easy.
Why don’t I just use emacs? Because as sysadmin/devop I’m often working on other people’s servers, and I don’t want to go installing buckets of stuff everywhere - vim is usually installed.
I found the best way to use bufexplorer is to open up all possible source files (eg vim src/.go other/.go) at the start of an editing session, then just skip between them (shown here with the excellent xMonad window manager, GNU Screen, and Gnome Terminal):
