vim-devdocs

Look up keywords on https://devdocs.io from Vim.

Introduction

Vim-devdocs is a very small and trivial plugin with a laser-focused purpose: making it possible to look up keywords on https://devdocs.io from Vim.

It does so by providing a single command, :DD, that will figure out the current filetype and point your default browser to the web app with the correct query.

Even better, :DD can be used under the hood by the built-in K for maximum street credibility.

To work its magic, vim-devdocs depends on:

• xdg-open on Linux and BSD, part of the xdg-utils package,
• open on MacOS, it's installed by default,
• cmd.exe on Windows, it's also installed by default,

but you can tell it to use any external command with 'g:devdocs_open_command'.

Vim-devdocs started its life in my config as an experimental snippet circa 2016, then became a clean and reusable Gist in mid-2017, which I decided to weaponize one year later. If you think a plugin should not be needed for such a trivial feature be reassured that I totally share that view. If you feel remix-y, the original (but regularly updated) Gist is still up in all its 13LOC glory.

NOTE: vim-devdocs is not affiliated in any way with https://devdocs.io so any request pertaining to that site should be directed to its operators.

Installation

Use your favorite plugin manager or dump the files below in their standard location:

on Unix-like systems…

~/.vim/doc/devdocs.txt
~/.vim/plugin/devdocs.vim

on Windows…

%userprofile%\vimfiles\doc\devdocs.txt
%userprofile%\vimfiles\plugin\devdocs.vim

If you go with the manual method, don't forget to execute the following command to make the documentation globally available:

on Unix-like systems…

:helptags ~/.vim/doc

on Windows…

:helptags %userprofile%\vimfiles\doc

Configuration

Add the line below to your vimrc if you want to disable automatic filetype scoping:

let g:devdocs_enable_scoping = 0

Usage

Use :DD without argument to look up the word under the cursor, scoped with the current filetype:

:DD

Use :DD [keyword] to look up the given keyword, scoped with the current filetype:

:DD Map

Use :DD [filetype] [keyword] to do the scoping yourself:

:DD scss @mixin

Add a <bang> to prevent automatic filetype scoping:

:DD!
:DD! Map

unless you absolutely insist:

:DD! scss @mixin

Vim comes with the built-in and often overlooked K, a normal mode command that looks up the keyword under the cursor with the external command or Ex command set via the 'keywordprg' option. :DD being a pretty basic Ex command it is easy to use it for K.

If you want K to ALWAYS use :DD, put this line in your vimrc:

set keywordprg=:DD

If you want K to use :DD ONLY for certain filetypes, put this line in the appropriate after/ftplugin/<filetype>.vim:

setlocal keywordprg=:DD