How to have Vim launched and opening a specific folder at startup on MacOS?

Question

Switching from TextMate to Vim, I'd like to have Vim launched and opening a specific folder at startup on MacOS?

Manually I can start Vim from the shell with mvim someFolder. I use MacOS 10.6 and NERDTree.

Thanks!

EDIT:

Reading and trying to apply the proposed answers (thanks by the way) I realize I was probably not clear enough in my question:

I want MacVim automatically launched at startup, and with opening a specific folder of mine. Later on during my MacOS session, if for any reason I open anew MacVim, I don't want it to open this specific folder, I want the MacVim default behavior.

I could do that with TextMate by going to MacOS System Preference, Accounts, Login Items and adding here my TextMate project file. As this project file was associated with TextMate, it was enough to have TextMate automatically launched at startup and displaying this project files list.

Is there a way to achieve this with Vim?

Answer 1

If you want MacVim to open the folder every time you might as well add an alias to your .profile or .bashrc like this:

alias vimm='mvim /path/to/some/folder'

This way, you can still launch MacVim for some task unrelated to the content of your folder (like editing your .profile or some config file) with the regular mvim command.

Answer 2

To make this launch at startup, you'll have to jump through some hoops.

Create a session file using .vims as the extension:

Open MacVim and open any/all of the files/tabs/NERDTrees you would like to have open. Save this to a session with the .vims extension:

mksession! ~/Desktop/project.vims

This can go in any directory you'd like, I'm just using the Desktop for ease of use.

Create an Automator Application:

Open Automator and create a new Custom application. Add a "Run Shell Script" action to your workflow. Change the Shell to /usr/bin/ruby, and change the "Pass input" to "as arguments", then paste this code into the body of the action:

file_name = ARGV[0].split(' ').join('\ ')
command = %Q!/usr/local/bin/mvim -S "#{file_name}"!
system(command)

Check the location of mvim with which, and update as necessary. Save the workflow (I put it in ~/Desktop/SU) and change the "File Format" to "Application".

Associate your Automator Application with .vims files.

Right click on ~/Desktop/project.vims and select "Get Info". Under "Open with:", select your Automator Application, and tell it to "Change All...".

Drop into your Login Items.

Open System Preferences, Accounts, Your User, and select the "Login Items" tab. Drag your ~/Desktop/project.vims file into the list.

Done!

Log out and back in and MacVim should open automagically.

Limitations.

For some reason Automator keeps running while this session if VIM is active. If anyone knows how to fix this, please let me know.

Answer 3

You can create an applescript to run a shell command and add it to your startup items

-- Open MacVim
do shell script "/path/to/mvim /path/to/folder"

or

    -- Open Vim on the terminal
    tell application "Terminal"
        activate
        do script "/path/to/vim /path/to/folder"
    end tell

using the AppleScript Editor.

Answer 4

What I find most useful is to open the project files in tabs using NERDTree and then make a session file:

mksession! project.vim

The exclamation mark is to overwrite the previous project.vim should you add a new file to the project. Then, anytime I want to fire up vim, I just have to call:

vim -S project.vim

I guess you could source the project.vim directly in the vimrc for a more automated approach.

Answer 5

To open NERDTree to the specific directory you can add the following line to your ~/.gvimrc (or ~/.vimrc if you want it to work in console as well):

au VimEnter * NERDTreeToggle /path/to/your/folder/