Greg Whitescarver’s Blog

In Linux, the global vim configuration is generally in /etc/vim/. For instance, while you might want to configure some options for yourself in ~/.vimrc, global options that you wish to apply for all users go into /etc/vim/vimrc (no ‘dot’). Your vim installation directory, something like /usr/share/vim/vim70/ has folders autoload/, syntax/, and plugin/, but altering these is not a good idea, since you could lose your modifications when vim is upgraded. Creating the same directories under /etc/vim/ is safer and more correct. /etc/vim/autoload/* will execute automatically, just like the autoload scripts in the installation dirs and the autoload scripts under ~/.vim/autoload/.

Below is the /etc/vim/vimrc file as it exists on two of our development servers. Please consult the vim documentation or :help for full explanation of any of these directives. In bold are the directives for syntax highlighting and autocomplete:

set nocompatible
set autoindent
set smartindent
set ruler
set incsearch
set tabstop=4
set shiftwidth=4
syntax on
color elflord
set backspace=indent,eol,start

"PDV vim plugin - ctrl-P on any line 
"will document that line outamatically in PHPdoc syntax
au FileType php source /etc/vim/plugin/php-doc.vim
au FileType php inoremap <C-P> <ESC>:call PhpDocSingle()<CR>i
au FileType php nnoremap <C-P> :call PhpDocSingle()<CR>
au FileType php vnoremap <C-P> :call PhpDocRange()<CR>

"Enable autocomplete via ctrl-x ctrl-o
setlocal omnifunc=syntaxcomplete#Complete
" Javascript didnt seem to register correctly with the setlocal 
" command above
autocmd FileType javascript set omnifunc=javascriptcomplete#CompleteJS
" Make it a little easier to autocomplete (ctrl-J instead of ctrl-X, ctrl-O)
" Ctrl-J is the same as the enter key by default, so it's harmless to remap 
" it to the autocomplete command sequence to make it home-row friendly. 
inoremap <C-J> <C-X><C-O>

Greg Bash, Vim, open source, platforms and frameworks, sysadmin sysadmin, Vim