VAP is a project configuration plugin for Vim. Useful for people who work with several CMake based projects. A JSON configuration file is used to change the behavior of Vim depending on the project you're currently working on.

Here's a few features of VAP:

• Automatically set the makeprg variable to use the Makefile located in the project's out-of-source build.
• Configure YouCompleteMe to use a CMake generated code completion database.
• Easily support multiple build targets with CMake.
• Simplifies use of non-default compilers
• Convenience commands for running and debugging executables
• Integration with vim-dispatch plugin for performing asynchronous task

VAP is suitable for daily use. There will be no effort to make VAP backwards compatible until a stable version 1.0 is released.

VAP is currently at version: 0.5.

If you use Vundle, add the following line to your '~/.vimrc':

Plugin 'dkcampbell/vap'

The first time Vim is run after VAP is installed a builds.json file will be created in $HOME/builds.json. Here is a quick glance at the default builds.json file:

{
    "source_dir": {
        "debug": {
            "build_dir": "folder-name",
            "cc": "clang",
            "cxx": "clang++",
            "debug_run": [],
            "default": true,
            "extra_args": [],
            "generator": "Unix Makefiles",
            "run": [],
            "toolchain": "",
            "type": "DEBUG",
            "ycm": false
        },
        "release": {
            "build_dir": "folder-name",
            "cc": "clang",
            "cxx": "clang++",
            "debug_run": [],
            "default": false,
            "extra_args": [],
            "generator": "Unix Makefiles",
            "run": [],
            "toolchain": "",
            "type": "RELEASE",
            "ycm": false
        }
    }
}

The configuration above is an example of a single project with two build targets. The source_dir is the location of the project. If Vim is started in this directory VAP will configure the various project settings you have specified for the current build target. The particular target chosen by VAP is whichever has "default" set to true.

You can use the :Edit command to load builds.json file into a buffer for easy editing. Here is a modified example used for an actual project I'm working on:

{
    "/home/dan/git/immovable-objects": {
        "debug": {
            "cc": "clang",
            "cxx": "clang++",
            "debug_run": [
                "/home/dan/builds/imo-debug-clang/blob"
            ],
            "default": true,
            "build_dir": "/home/dan/builds/imo-debug-clang/",
            "extra_args": [
                "-DCMAKE_EXPORT_COMPILE_COMMANDS=ON"
            ],
            "generator": "Unix Makefiles",
            "run": [
                "/home/dan/builds/imo-debug-clang/blob"
            ],
            "toolchain": "",
            "type": "DEBUG",
            "ycm": true
        },
        "release": {
            "cc": "clang",
            "cxx": "clang++",
            "debug_run": [
                "/home/dan/builds/imo-release-clang/blob"
            ],
            "default": false,
            "build_dir": "/home/dan/builds/imo-release-clang/",
            "extra_args": [],
            "generator": "Unix Makefiles",
            "run": [
                "/home/dan/builds/imo-release-clang/blob"
            ],
            "toolchain": "",
            "type": "RELEASE",
            "ycm": true
        }
    }
}

This will automatically load the debug target for the immovable-objects project when Vim is started in the /home/dan/git/immovable-objects directory. Among the things it does is set various CMake configuration tweaks. For example, when :CMakeGenerate is executed it will place the build files in the build_dir folder. The extra_args will be passed to CMake just as you would pass them on the command line. VAP will also properly setup the :make command to work for this project. I can also launch the executable using the :Run command, which will execute what is configured in the target for the run property. For more information what the available options do see the documentation with :help VAP.