Vim is a kickass text editor turned IDE (with the right plug-ins). Android is an awesome mobile operating system that's open and plainly rocks. Why not put these two together?

android-dev.vimis a Vim plugin that allows you to build your Android application on the command line and within Vim. The plug-in is written purely in VimL for portability.

NOTE: This plugin has ONLY been tested on a bleeding edge version of Vim 7.3 with --features=huge. Please report any problems you encounter with version information and compilation options included.

At the time of writing, there isn't any language dependencies but it does require on the following:

• Ant is used a lot to handle most of the building tasks. We ❤ you!

• Android Development Tools have to be not only on your system, but discoverable in your $PATH.

I recommending using Vundle to install plugins. The line necessary to add this plugin is as follows:

Bundle 'jalcine/android-dev.vim'

All of the methods for the plug-in are defined with AndroidDev as the leading prefix. Some of the commands you'd use a lot are as follows:

• :AndroidDevBuildDebug - invokes a debug build for your Android application.
• :AndroidDevProjectCreate - inits the wizard to build a new Android project.

Extensibility is what we love and one of the more popular philosophies out there. The following are a list of recommended options to be set after installing this plugin.

• g:android_sdk_path defines the path that at which you'd be able to find your SDK tools for Android. The folders tools and platform-tools should be discoverable in here.

This plugin is licensed under the MIT license. Make it work, people!

I'm Jacky Alcine and I love code and chatting. Find me on Twitter or jalcine on Freenode!