Any way to provide a separate vimrc file just for 1 session

vimvimrc

I would like to know, if there is a way in vim/vi to provide a different vimrc file. I am looking at managing 2 different vimrc files. For the contents I checkout/checkin in version control I want to use different set of commands and not the normal one in my .vimrc file

For Example.

My .vimrc file contains a command to automatically delete any trailing space while saving a file. But, I don't want this feature to be activated for specific files.

So any way to provide a different vimrc file ( maybe at command line, giving it as parameter each time as vim –vimrc=somefile file-to-open) ?

Best Answer

See the manpage:

-u {vimrc} Use the commands in the file {vimrc} for initializations. All the other initializations are skipped. Use this to edit a special kind of files. It can also be used to skip all initializations by giving the name "NONE". See ":help initialization" within vim for more details.

Related Solutions

Temporary .vimrc

Suppose you have this other set of settings in /tmp/myvimrc. If my reading of man vim is correct you can start vim with this set of settings using the following:

$ vim -u /tmp/myvimrc

Thus, to make this an option for the rest of the session, I would create a function that sets this as an alias for vim. Thus, in bash I would put something like this in my .bashrc file:

function vimswitch {
    alias vim='vim -u /tmp/myvimrc'
}

Then, when I wanted my new vim settings, I would just run:

$ vimswitch

Note that I wouldn't store myvimrc in /tmp since this could easily be cleared out upon reboot. If you are using a shell other than bash this should still be possible, but the syntax could differ slightly.

Linux – Utilize a different user’s vimrc as well as vim folder

You can add your .vim runtimepath on top of your .vimrc file:

:set runtimepath=/home/b/.vim,$VIMRUNTIME

This makes vim search for plugins, colors etc. in /home/b/.vim first and then in the standard location (for example /usr/share/vim/vim72/ in debian squeeze).

I'm using this together with an alias vim='vim -u /home/b/.vimrc'.

Best Answer

Related Solutions

Temporary .vimrc

Linux – Utilize a different user’s vimrc as well as vim folder

Related Question