Short hint for all those who use vim and pathogen

Today, after updating my wokspace to latest version I encounter below error during vim running:

Error detected while processing function pathogen#runtime_append_all_bundles:
line    1:
E121: Undefined variable: source_path
E116: Invalid arguments for function string(source_path).') to pathogen#incubate('.string(source_path.'/{}').')')
E116: Invalid arguments for function 4_warn
Press ENTER or type command to continue

Quick look on pathogen runtime_append_all_bundles function and I found:

call s:warn('Change pathogen#runtime_append_all_bundles('.string(a:1).') to pathogen#incubate('.string(a:1.'/{}').')')

So simply replacing:

call pathogen#runtime_append_all_bundles()

with:

call pathogen#incubate()

in $HOME/.vimrc fix the problem.

Vim as a Blogger editor

Blogger.vim is a vim plugin for interfacing with Google's Blogger. Below I will use my workspace git repository. To use this plugin we need pretty new ruby >= 1.9.2 and gems nokogiri and net-https-wrapper. Let's install latest possible ruby for Debian, before that make sure you have latest updates:

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get upgrade 
sudo apt-get dist-upgrade

And ruby:

sudo apt-get install ruby1.9.3

Before we install gems , we need to resolve some dependencies:

sudo apt-get install libxml2-dev libxslt1-dev

Latest nokogiri 1.5.2 have some issues, so we need to use 1.5.0 which is stable:

sudo gem install nokogiri --version 1.5.0

And the wrapper for https:

sudo gem install net-https-wrapper

Finally also pandoc will be neded to display web pages in vim:

sudo apt-get install pandoc

Right now we are able to run vim with blogger support. First we need to configure vim, add below lines to your $HOME/.vimrc file:

let g:blogger_blogid = 'your_blogid_here'
let g:blogger_email = 'your_email_here' 
let g:blogger_pass = 'your_blogger_password_here'

Run vim and try to list your blogger posts by typing:

:e blogger:list

If list of you see all your posts than it seems that plugin works good. Finally check writing feature. Create file with some text and type:

:w blogger:create

Few things doesn't work as it should. Meybe I will find enough time to fix it. This article was created by using blogger.vim script.

Splitting my personal repository

After writing a few posts in which my workspace scripts could be useful, I realized that I should split blog works from the scripts that can be useful to others. From now materials related to the blog I will track in a separate repository and I'll add them as submodule into my environment. This implies that if we intend to deliver something to a broader audience this should include only those things which the recipient is expected and which we say that we provide. Any additional items should be removed. We get a lot of unwanted stuff today, at every opportunity. From an economic point of view, it is known that very often margin value law is used here i.e. by hypermarkets, I will touch on this subject on another occasion, related to economics.

Improve productivity by tracking work environment with git - vim

In this post I try to describe my vim configuration procedure and how it is connected with git. The whole concept is based on keeping all the configuration files in a separate directory. These files are connected using symbolic links in places where system or application requires it (eg $HOME/.vimrc -> /home/jdoe/workspace/dotfiles/vimrc). So first let's create local directory for vim:

cd ~/workspace/dotfiles;mkdir vim

1. Pathogen

The first plugin that will be installed is pathogen created by tpope and accessible through github. Pathogen is a vim script to manage all vim plugins with ease. Below line add pathogen as submodule to our workspace repository created in previous post:


git submodule add https://github.com/tpope/vim-pathogen.git dotfiles/vim/pathogen

Initialise repository and update it:


git submodule init && git submodule update

Create additional directories need to complete pathogen installation, change directory to autoload:


cd dotfiles/vim;mkdir {autoload,bundle};cd autoload

In autoload directory pathogen should be installed, bundle directory is a place for all plugins installed in future. Finally we need to link vim script from pathogen submodule to current directory (dotfiles/vim/autoload):


ln -s ../pathogen/autoload/pathogen.vim .

Directory structure should look like below:


                pietrushnic@eriador:~/workspace/dotfiles$ tree
                .
                └── vim
                    ├── autoload
                    │   └── pathogen.vim -> ../pathogen/autoload/pathogen.vim
                    ├── bundle
                    └── pathogen
                        ├── autoload
                        │   └── pathogen.vim
                        └── README.markdown

At the end of pathogen installation few lines to $HOME/.vimrc should be added. Of course following rules about dotfiles management .vimrc should be created as separate file in ~/workspace/dotfiles and linked to $HOME/.vimrc.

touch vimrc;ln -s $PWD/vimrc $HOME/.vimrc

Add below lines to $HOME/.vimrc

 call pathogen#infect()
call pathogen#runtime_append_all_bundles()
call pathogen#helptags()
syntax on
filetype plugin indent on



2. Fuzzyfinder
This is second plugin without which I cannot work. It speeds up searching though files, directories and tags. Has multiple useful features. RTFM if you want knew them. I will be also added as a git submodule:


git submodule add https://github.com/vim-scripts/FuzzyFinder.git dotfiles/vim/bundle/fuzzyfinder

Additional plugin is needed to correctly install fuzzyfinder:


git submodule add https://github.com/vim-scripts/L9.git dotfiles/vim/bundle/l9

Initialize and update submodules:

git submodule init && git submodule update
Configuration I suggest to configure fuzzyfinder with accordance to example provided in help. 
• Run vim and type :h fuf@en<Enter>. 
• Choose tag fuf-vimrc-example and press Ctrl-]. 
• Mark whole keybindings copy and paste to ~/.vimrc

Right now I think it is enough with vim configuration. Of course I use plenty of other plugins but I don't have to time to describe my them all (maybe in future posts). Don't forget to commit your changes, there could be a lot of them, however, to deal with the distribution of these changes and improve your skills try to use git add -p interface, suggesting after linux code style - each commit should contain separate logical part of the changes, personally I add prefix to my commits (eg . vim, git, etc.) to ease deal with git log.
Notes:

• vim helpfiles generates tags files, which should be ignored by git, so I recommend to create .gitignore in every module with blow content:

.gitignore
tags*

• by default fuzzyfinder operate on unfriendly color palette espessicaly when using it through putty, highlighted pattern could be changed by added below lines to .vimrc (9 = black)

" fuzzy-finder - fix colors
highlight PmenuSel ctermbg=9

Hostname generator

Many times happened that I spend time, during the installation of the new system, whether it be a virtual physical machine, wondering about it's hostname. One day I asked myself the trouble searching for host name generator. Best I could find (currently second in the results of google) is rospo.net. It gives you the choice of category for the host name. My favorite, as a fan of fantasy is "Characters from Tolkien". Although the category name does not reflect the truth, because in addition also includes a set of known sites in middlearth and more. So I recommend:

http://rospo.net/webproducts/name/index.php

Improve productivity by tracking work environment with git - preparation

Below is first post from series in which I want to describe my experience gained in attempt to enhance my productivity by using git to control the contents of some files in my home directory. The first step to improve the productivity is good organization of working environment. It happens very often that I work on multiple machines both physical and virtual. Therefore I need a good mechanism to share knowledge, experience, code, configuration and many other things. Configuration described below is only an example that actually fits my way of working.
First of all simple concept of directory structure is needed. Let's start with:

$HOME/workspace
        |- dotfiles
        |- blog

mkdir -p $HOME/workspace/blog;mkdir -p $HOME/workspace/dotfiles

cd workspace

Write some files (i.e. for your blog) with your favourite editor, initialize repository and prepare first commit

git init

git add .;git commit -m "Initial commit for environment tracking"

To avoid information about untracked vim swp files add $HOME/workspace/.gitignore with following content:

.gitignore
*.swp

arbtt as productivity improver for Linux enviroment

As I mentioned in previous post I work a lot on improving my productivity. After FreeMind it is time for arbtt. This is small tool which tracks active windows during your work. It is delivered with distro that I'm currently using (Debian wheezy). So all I had to do was:

sudo apt-get install arbtt

Below I try describe how I configure arbtt to work with some apps that I use (Google Chrome, FreeMind, gnome-terminal and screen).
To effectively work with arbtt I had to run a daemon that collects information. In this way, I found the first problem, namely, it is hard to find a website, which correctly explains how to execute command during startup on Debian with GNOME environment. After few tries I realize that I should focus on GNOME autostart mechanism. This led me to create little file in $HOME/.config/autostart which looks like that:

[Desktop Entry]
Type=Application
Encoding=UTF-8
Name=The Automatic Rule-Base Time Tracker
Exec=arbtt-capture
Terminal=false

So I had configured arbtt and it starts to capture data about my work. To display this data in friendly manner arbtt-stat should be used. Application complains if $HOME/.arbtt/categorize.cfg wasn't configured for it appropriate. Detailed documentation about this file can be found on arbtt configuration page. The process of writing this file should be iterative, starting point for me was:

-- This defines some aliases, to make the reports look nicer:
aliases (
        "sun-awt-X11-XFramePeer"        -> "java"
        )

-- A rule that probably everybody wants. Being inactive for over a minute
-- causes this sample to be ignored by default.
$idle > 60 ==> tag inactive,


current window $program == "sun-awt-X11-XFramePeer" &&
current window ($title =~ /(.+)\s-\sFreeMind/)
  ==> tag program:FreeMind-$1,

current window $program == "gnome-terminal" &&
current window ($title =~ /(.+)/)
   ==> tag term:$1,

-- Simple rule that just tags the current program
tag program:$current.program,

-- I'd like to know what web pages in google-chrome I'm working in. So I do
-- not tag necessarily by the active window title, but the title that contains
-- the specific string.
current window $program == "google-chrome" &&
any window ($program == "google-chrome" && $title =~ /(.+)\s-\sGoogle\sChrome/)
  ==> tag www:$1,

However, after creating a configuration file such statistics were displayed correctly it was still a big problem to solve - how to combine arbtt with gnome-terminal and screen. The first one requires only a correctly set the window's name. Although the synchronization of the terminal window's name with a window inside the screen was not a trivial task (primarily on the mass of broken tutorials that can be found on the web). Finally my .screenrc looks like that:

termcapinfo xterm* 'hs:ts=\E]0;:fs=\007:ds=\E]0;\007'
defhstatus "[screen] ^Et"
hardstatus off
# Set the scrollback length:
defscrollback 10000
    
# Select whether you want to see the copyright notice during startup:
startup_message off
# Display a caption string below, appearing like tabs and
# displaying the window number and application name (by default).
caption always
caption string "%{= kG}[ %{G}%H %{g}][%= %{= kw}%?%-Lw%?%{r}(%{W}%n*%f%t%?(%u)%?%{r})%{w}%?%+Lw%?%?%= %{g}][%{B} %m-%d %{W}%c %{g}]"
#"%{= kb}[ %=%{w}%?%-Lw%?%{b}(%{W}%n*%f %t%?(%u)%?%{b})%{w}%?%+Lw%?%?%= %{b}][%{B} %H %{W}%l %{b}][%{B} %d.%m.%Y %{W}%0c %{b}]"
#"%{bw}[%H] [%?%-Lw%?%{wb}%n*%f%t%{bw}%?%+Lw%?]%=%{bw} [%1`] [%c:%s] [%l]"
# "%{kw}%-w%{wr}%n %t%{-}%+w"

defhstatus set terminal title and caption keeps data about my open windows in screen. Every time I open new window or change current one terminal title is updated.
For now that's all. In the future I wanted to write how to synchronize the title of the window in the screen with vim editor to include information about the currently edited file.

First steps to improve work productivity in Linux environment

The problem encountered on several occasions over several months. Now it is time to deal with it. How did this happen? As always, resources were not sufficient, and if we can not increase the amount of resources we must strive to optimize their use.In this case, it was about time.


While reading my last acquisition, once again I faced the problem of re-configure Linux account. Every time when I need new account for some reasons I need to configure some things manually. Most things are simple enough, we copy configuration files from the already existing user directory, and voila. Of course Murphy's law works, and something goes wrong. Sometimes we need to create a new account with just a few of the tools configured as in other existing accounts. So we have a problem, however, reflecting on the solution, my mind was deepened in the increasing number of new issues, which caused the solution became more distant.


How this process looks like? First we need new account, it should get automatically some configuration files that I create for other accounts. Second I realize that I don't have methods for storing configs that I use most. I heard about dotfiles tracking with git with cloud help (e.g. github). When I google this issue I found dotty. But after that I ask myself about productivity improvements in broad sense and the conclusion was that my work scheme should be changed. So I try to find some hints about improving productivity, there are thousand of web pages about that. Few things I found useful first of all the idea of "automated time tracking". Second that chaos that I produced during solving simple problem meant that I thought about controlling of its flow, and this led me to mind mapping technique. AFAIK FreeMind is the best free software for playing with this way of data presentation. Below I attach my first mind map in FreeMind, this is of course beta version.