When you’ve been working for awhile and you’re all moved in to your new digs — maybe it’s the end of the day, maybe it’s been 71 days and you finally have to give in and restart your computer, you just save the session file to anywhere you’d like (I like ~/.vim/sessions/) using :mksession (or :mks).
:mks ~/.vim/sessions/rooster.vim
The next time you’re ready to start working on that project, source that session file within vim:
:source ~/.vim/sessions/rooster.vim
Or open it when you run vim using the -S flag:
vim -S ~/.vim/sessions/rooster.vim
Boom. Everything will be exactly as you left it: the working directory, your windows, splits, and buffers, and any options you’ve :set. When the cycle repeats as you rearrange the furniture, just overwite the old session by using :mks!
Sessions don’t save marks, registers, or command line history (which are stored in viminfo), but this hasn’t been a hindrance so far, and should you want to persist it, you can. If you want to further bake the use of sessions into your vim experience, Peter Odding’s session.vim plugin adds a number of helpers for working with session files, and integrates session saving into the default vim workflow. I’ve only just discovered it in the process of researching this post, but I’m certainly looking forward to giving it a shot; it’s an epic pain when you forget to save a long-running session and you’re left traveling back in time the next time you resume your project.
Having my editor become a comfortable and familiar space, on a project-by-project basis, has been a huge boon. It’s immensely useful when you’re neck-deep in a project, and it’s a downright pleasure when stepping back into something you worked on a year earlier feels like returning to an old friend’s pad.
While this may be old hat to some, I’m sure it’s news to others. I’m not exactly the Gandalf of vim, but I couldn’t help the feeling that a lot of people are missing out on the magic here. What do you think? Excited to go cozy up in the comfort of your new digs? Dying to point out some subtlety that I’ve missed? Let’s continue the discussion in the comments!
reference SESSIONS: THE VIM FEATURE YOU PROBABLY AREN’T USING