SwiftForVim

Fast, typesafe, Vim plugins with the power of Swift!

SwiftForVim integrates the Swift Programming Language into Vim.

Vim API

Vim

Vimscript <-> Swift

Calling Vim commands from Swift

Vim.command("echo 'Hello World!'")

Evaluating Vim expressions from Swift

let path = String(Vim.eval("expand('%:p')"))

Call Swift functions from Vim

VimPlugin.setCallable("cursorMoved") {
    _ in
    print("The cursor moved")
}

// Off in VimScript
call s:SwiftVimEval("MyAwesomePlugin.invoke('cursorMoved')")

VimAsync

Threading and Async support for Vim

DispatchQueue.async {
    // Do some work
    VimTask.onMain {
        Vim.command("echo 'Hello World! on the main thread.'")
    }
}

Note: VimAsync depends on Foundation. Its not needed for basic, single threaded plugins.

Usage

First, generate a Vim Plugin setup to use Swift.

git clone https://github.com/swift-vim/SwiftForVim.git
cd SwiftForVim
plugin_path=/path/to/MyAwesomePlugin make generate

Then, build the plugin.

cd /path/to/MyAwesomePlugin
make

Last, setup the plugin ( VimPlug, Pathogen, etc ).

Design Goals

Portable, fast, and simple to use.

It doesn't require recompiling Vim or a custom fork of the Swift language.

Why?

Swift makes it easy to build fast, type safe programs, that are easy to debug and deploy.

Examples

The source tree contains a very basic example and test case.

SwiftPackageManger.vim is the canonical use case and uses VimAsync to run a custom RPC service inside of vim.