MacVim: slimv does not start

Question

I'm using MacVim (kind of gvim for OSX) and try to get the slimv plugin running. Sadly it's not working out of the box. In fact, it does not start up at all.

My setup:

MacVim (32bit cause of this) (vim 7.3)
:scriptnames does not list ftplugin/slimv.vim while plugin/paredit.vim is listed
:set ft? shows filetype=lisp for .lisp files
:messages shows no errors
:filetype filetype detection:ON plugin:ON indent:ON
:echo g:paredit_loaded 1
:echo g:slimv_loaded E121: Undefined variable: g:slimv_loaded \ E15: Invalid expression: g:slimv_loaded
compiled with +python (2.7)

SBCL and slime are installed - works flawless with emacs. I tried it with and without let g:slimv_swank_cmd = ... in .vimrc and changed the line recommended on the plugin page from

let g:slimv_swank_cmd = '!osascript -e "tell application \"Terminal\" to do script \"sbcl --load ~/.vim/slime/start-swank.lisp\""'

to

let g:slimv_swank_cmd = '!sh -c "sbcl --load /Applications/MacVim.app/Contents/Resources/vim/runtime/slime/start-swank.lisp" &'

since the osascript was not working and I don't know how to fix it. But a similar call to xterm is sufficient for Linux so my sh call should be fine. Well, I got no idea what to try next. :/

The problem got solved by installing slimv to ~/.vim instead of the vim ebedded in MacVim. Maybe some kind of bug? However, Common Lisp + vim - I just love it.

If I remember correctly from when I set up slimv, VIM can't be the parent process of the inferior LISP. Emacs has a concept of child processes, but VIM doesn't. So you need to start the instance of LISP from somewhere else. That's why the default has an osascript command -- that opens a new Terminal window which owns the LISP session. — Alex Martini
Using the default command doesn't open a Terminal (nothing happens) and even starting the process by hand does not help. — Julian
In my .vimrc file, I have g:slimv_swank_cmd = "! osascript -e 'tell application \"Terminal\" to do script \"/sw/opt/sbcl-1.0.47/bin/sbcl --load ~/.vim/slime/start-swank.lisp\"'" -- you have to tell Terminal to run the script, not MacVIM like your first line shows. Alternately, try running the sbcl --load .../start-swank.lisp command in a Terminal window first and then starting slimv. It should be able to connect to an already-running instance instead of starting its own. — Alex Martini
osascript itself is working, you are right. I replaced my approach. — Julian

svec svec · Accepted Answer · 2013-09-12T02:47:41

Because moving the slimv plugin to ~/.vim fixed it, I suspect the problem is that MacVim's default /Applications/MacVim.app/Contents/Resources/vim/runtime/ftplugin/lisp.vim is being sourced before the ftplugin/lisp/slimv-lisp.vim file provided with slimv.

Both of those files (lisp.vim and slimv-lisp.vim) start with code like this:

" Only do this when not done yet for this buffer
if exists("b:did_ftplugin")
    finish
endif

" Don't load another plugin for this buffer
let b:did_ftplugin = 1

and so whichever file gets sourced first will prevent the other file from running since vim does finish (exits the script) if it detects that another *lisp*.vim script was run previously and therefore set the b:did_ftplugin buffer-local variable.

You can tell this is happening by running MacVim from the command line with the arguments:

-V20macvim-log.txt hello.lisp

Then quit the MacVim session that starts up, and look at the macvim-log.txt file it created.

Search for b:did_ftplugin and you'll see it referenced each time lisp.vim or slimv-lisp.vim runs, and you can see that lisp.vim runs first, which prevents slimv-lisp.vim from working.

Moving your slimv install from the /Applications/MacVim.app/ dir to your ~/.vim dir will change the order so that slimv-lisp.vim is sourced before lisp.vim, and then slimv will work.

MacVim: slimv does not start

3 Answers