Auto-reloading a file in VIM as soon as it changes on disk

Question

Assuming that a file doesn't have unsaved changes in the VIM buffer, I'd like it to reload automatically if the file changes on disk. The most frequent use case for this is when I update the working copy in which the file resides.

How can I achieve this?

Answer 1

In your ~/.vimrc:

set autoread

Answer 2

Autoread does not work correctly. The following works for me:

You need to first install the script from here.

I got the best results by calling the setup function directly, like so.

let autoreadargs={'autoread':1} 
execute WatchForChanges("*",autoreadargs) 

The reason for this, is that I want to run a ipython/screen/vim setup.

You can easily convert this into an enhanced version of view.

script the process..

mkdir -p ~/bin
cat <<`OUT` > ~/bin/vimviewer
#!/usr/bin/env sh
exec vim -n --cmd "source /home/bryan/.vim/.vimrc.watchforchanges | let autoreadargs={'autoread':1} | execute WatchForChanges('*',autoreadargs)" $@
`OUT`

chmod 755 ~/bin/vimviewer
vimview test.txt