GVim and JavaScript with TernJS

Ok. So after cross-posting the GVim and Java from my NUS blog..

YouCompleteMe not only provides awesome functionality with EClim or Jedi (for Java / Python respectively). Since it can get along with (as I understand things) Vim’s OmniComplete, then YCM works with other intelligent completion things like TernJS.

TernJS, made by the same guy who did CodeMirror, does some pretty fancy JavaScript jazz, so your text editor can (try to) infer a variables type, .. and can provide intelligent autocomplete suggestions.

Married with YCM, the intelligence and fuzzy-completion makes for what must surely be the most powerful JavaScript editing today.
(Well, I dunno what the emacs or Sublime kiddies are up to; they might be pretty close too).

But. This was one time where being a total noob left things easier for Windows than for Linux.
See, oddly enough, I managed to get this working on Windows while it was still blowing up at me on Linux.
(Since I don’t want to battle my OS, I go with Linux Mint 15. I’m pretty sure Linux Mint is what comes up if you Google-search “easiest Linux to use”).

Turns out I had two problems:
First was that “node” didn’t actually run NodeJS, since this was changed due to name conflicts. A quick symlink solves this issue..
Second was that, since I was too lazy to build NodeJS from source, the version in I was running from the package-repository was ancient. Ancient.

I’ve not tried to build much from source on Windows.
By a poor selective case, I understand that trying to build Vim on Windows is a total pain in the arse. Building it on Linux is really really easy, though.

But I was lazy. Turns out that to build NodeJS from source, after downloading the code, was the stock-and-standard:

$ ./configure  
$ make  
$ sudo checkinstall

Well.
I used “checkinstall” rather than “make install”,
but that’s all there was to it, anyway.

And with ‘node’ being called as expected, with an actual up-to-date version of Node, TernJS worked like it should! Fantastic.