This plugin activates itself for files that belong to some ROS1 package.

Features

Sets &makeprg to catkin_make, catkin build, or rosmake <package-name> so that the package, to which the file being edited belongs, could be built with :make.

Editor commands

• :A to alternate between different kinds of C/C++ files (.cpp, .cc, .h, .hh, .hpp, .impl) in the current package
• :Roscd to cd to an arbitrary ROS package (with tab-completion)
• :Rosed/:TabRosed/:SpRosed/:VspRosed to open arbitrary files (with tab-completion of both package and filenames)

Filetype support

Message, service, and action files

• syntax highlighting
• omni-completion for message types
• goto message definition with gd command

Launch files

• syntax highlighting (as xml + yaml inside <rosparam> tags)
• syntax check (if Syntastic is available)
• omni-completion
  • package names
  • node and nodelet names
  • substitution args
  • environment variables
  • paths with $(find ...) substitution
• goto file with gf command when the cursor is on a tag
  • with 'file' attribute
  • with an attribute that has a value matching $(find ... pattern

Xacro files

• syntax highlighting (as xml)
• goto file with gf command (when the cursor is on a tag with 'filename' attribute)

Dynamic reconfigure files

• syntax highlighting (as python)

Integration with other plugins

vim-ros integrates with several other plugins out of the box. This section lists the plugins and explains suggested configuration.

YouCompleteMe

YouCompleteMe is is a fast, as-you-type, fuzzy-search code completion engine for Vim.

vim-ros provides semantic completion for ROS filetypes via omni-complete functions. YouCompleteMe will automatically use them, however if you want the completion to be magically triggered as you type, you have to associate proper triggers with ROS filetypes in your .vimrc:

let g:ycm_semantic_triggers = {
\   'roslaunch' : ['="', '$(', '/'],
\   'rosmsg,rossrv,rosaction' : ['re!^', '/'],
\ }

UltiSnips

Syntastic

Installation

It is recommended to install vim-ros using vim-plug. The (somewhat dated) alternatives are Vundle or pathogen.

This plugin makes use of rospkg and (optionally) catkin-tools Python packages. Run the following command in your terminal to make sure that they are installed (replace vim with nvim if necessary):

vim -c "python3 import pip._internal; pip._internal.main(['install', 'rospkg', 'catkin-tools'])" -c "qall"

Options

• g:ros_make [current|all] Controls which package to build
• g:ros_catkin_make_options Additional options for catkin_make (i.e '-j4 -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Debug' ...)
• g:ros_disable_warnings Suppress warnings about lack of Python 3 support and/or inability to import rospkg.

Contributing

The plugin is written in Python and includes a shim to make interfacing with Vim as easy as it could possibly be. Therefore, extending the plugin does not require knowledge of the peculiarities of Vim Script. Contributions are welcome!

Acknowledgments

Inspired by the vim-rails plugin.

License

MIT License. Copyright (c) 2013-2025 Sergey Alexandrov.