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A Simple (Yet Powerful) Tip on Git and Vim

jovica on July 31, 2018

Here's a tip you might find useful if you work with git and you use Vim. I recently came up with it. For example, I want to see a file in differen...
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David Wickes •

Maybe better if instead of an alias you wrote a short bash script that could take an argument for the filetype? Something like (call it vimtype).

vim - -c "set syntax=$1"

So...

git show branch_name:/path/to/file.py | vimtype python

Just a thought

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jovica •

I like it, cool idea too! Thanks.

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Lakshman Kumar Narayanan •

Also please checkout [vim-fugitive|github.com/tpope/vim-fugitive].

Have the interested file from the current branch open in vim. Then :Gedit some_other_branch:% opens the file as in the other branch, with syntax highlighting!

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Randy Creasi •

vim-fugitive transformed the way I work. Can't recommend it highly enough.

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Thomas H Jones II •

For me:

vim -c 'set syntax=<TYPE>' <( git show <BRANCH>:PATH/TO/FILE )

Feels more natural. Basically, I'm still saying "vim this".