Still using vi for Ansible? No problem!

Having grown up using vi as a main editor on UN*X systems, I still love it and often fire it up for quick demos etc. I can't think of any other software so long lived, loved and effective still!

I sometimes get asked for tips and tricks for using vi/vim for writing Ansible. I never got round to formally writing anything up, until now :)

Vi can be customised through a .vimrc config file.

I came across a cracking guide by Doug Black which covers all the bases and more. I recommend reading this to see if there's any other settings which could be useful for you.

Here's my config:

cat ~/.vimrc

" cracking guide at https://dougblack.io/words/a-good-vimrc.html
set tabstop=2                               " a tab = 2 spaces
set softtabstop=2                           " no. spaces on backspace
set expandtab                               " turn tabs into spaces
set autoindent                              " autoindent!
set wildmenu                                " autocomplete for filenames
set showmatch                               " parenthesis matching
syntax on                                   " syntax!
colorscheme default                         " add a little colour to our live
set incsearch                               " search as chars entered
set hlsearch                                " highlight matches
let mapleader=","                           " leader is a comma
nnoremap <leader><space> :nohlsearch<CR>    " leader,space disables search highlighting

Most of this should be self explanatory I hope. It is also available here

Enjoy.