Ideally, you should just run this script and your computer will be customized exactly like mine. Basically, this file forcibly symlinks the config files in this repo to your home folder. If you don't want to lose your old config, you should back up your files before running ./configure.sh. For i3wm additional tweaking will probably be necessary due to monitor resolutions, keyboard layouts and media controls.
I personally use Vim-Plug as my package manager in vim.
Some of my favorite packages are
To work with ALE in C++ you have to export your `compile_commands.json. This is done by putting
set( CMAKE_EXPORT_COMPILE_COMMANDS ON )
in your CMakeLists.txt. If you're feeling really really adventurous for ROS you can put this line in your top-level cmake file /opt/ros/kinetic/share/catkin/cmake/toplevel.cmake. That way all future ROS projects will export their compile commands for ALE to use.
In ALE, you also have to select which linters you want to use. For C++, I'm currently using the Clang stack. The linters work pretty well with exception of header files. There is this issue explaining the nuances of why it doesn't work and some rather hacky fixes.
Rebind the prefix to a more sensible C-a, and add some nicer bindings for switching and resizing panes.