Debugging Clojure Dev Environment in Vim

Dan Pelensky
Jul 21, 2017 · 2 min read

Yesterday, during my IPM my mentors noticed that my Vim setup wasn’t auto-indenting .clj files, and said this is something that I should really fix. I had been so focused on learning the syntax and writing functional code that I hadn’t even picked up that it should have been auto-indenting.

I started googling, and saw that a Vim Plugin that I already had installed, vim-clojure-static, should be handling the indentation. I uninstalled it and reinstalled it and it would still not auto-indent.

I uninstalled it and installed VimClojure and tried, and it would not work. I looked at both my Mentors’ .vimrc files on their Githubs and couldn’t figure it out.

I googled every search term that I could think of and I couldn’t find anything.

I uninstalled every single vim plugin that I have, and removed everything from my .vimrc file, and started reintroducing things one at a time, but it would still not indent.

Then I went and spoke to one of the Crafters here, Mollie, and she showed me her .vimrc file and gave me a few debugging steps, but I couldn’t find it. She published her .vimrc file to Github and I deleted mine and installed hers, and it still would not work! Then she kindly offered to come over and help debug, and we spent a good 40 minutes looking through everything.

We noticed that I had a /.vim/indent/clojure.vim file that she didn’t have, so tried deleting that and boom — everything worked.

It turns out that file was overriding vim-clojure-static’s settings, and I didn’t even know that file wasn’t supposed to be there.

Moral of the story — if you use someone else’s .vimrc files, there can be things that you don’t even think to look for causing you issues.

)

Dan Pelensky

Written by

Software Crafter. He/Him. Views are my own

Welcome to a place where words matter. On Medium, smart voices and original ideas take center stage - with no ads in sight. Watch
Follow all the topics you care about, and we’ll deliver the best stories for you to your homepage and inbox. Explore
Get unlimited access to the best stories on Medium — and support writers while you’re at it. Just $5/month. Upgrade