Working with Vim

Terminal

Use the :terminal command to start a terminal session in a new buffer. This is a full terminal shell, just inside of Vim. The feature is relatively new, so, it requires Vim 8.1 or Neovim.

I normally use the terminal for quick one-off processes, like a build. If I'm going to do much more, I'll drop to the shell using ctrl-z and return using fg in bash.

Script the Terminal

What I really like about the built-in terminal is you can script it. This makes automating some tasks quite easy and useful. For example, writing this tutorial I run my wpsync program. This copies the markdown files I am authoring, in Vim of course, to my WordPress site.

I run this using: :terminal wpsync

Build Your Program

You can create a config mapping to make it even easier. I map the following to build a Go binary using the ,b shortcut.

autocmd FileType go nmap <leader>b :terminal go build<CR>