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Make SublimeText Awesome

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Introduction

I was using Atom for awhile, but it's slow (3+ second) startup times started to get to me. Once I learned the magic of cmd+shift+p from Atom (inspired by the Sublime Text Command Palette), I went back to the original and figured out how to get it configured nicely. One of the good things about this approach is that you end up with a reasonable Python IDE when you are done. Also works nicely for Clojure - the REPL has good support for selecting and pasting code snippets from the editing window. Comparing the two briefly:

Application Pros Cons
Atom
  • Faster to get started. You end up with a prettier and functional setup with less configuration effort.
  • Package manager is batteries included.
  • Markdown preview rendering in the application.
  • Treeview colors files that have been modified in a Git repo.
  • Super slow (3-10 second) application load times.
  • Python code completion still a work in progress.
  • No support for treeview directory flattening.
SublimeText
  • Super fast (0-1 second) application load times.
  • Python Jedi code completion.
  • Supports directory flattening into Java package names, although a bit weird.
  • Python console for programmatic configuration.
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  • Multi-language REPL in the application.
  • Package Control is not part of the standard distribution.
  • The ST2/ST3 schism, although ST3 seems to be in better shape these days.
  • Markdown preview rendering forks a browser process, although it keeps track of the rendered temporary file and can reload it.
  • No colorized flagging in treeview for modified Git repo files.

Install and Configure

Install pyenv

Warning

When you use pyenv with Sublime Text and SublimeLinter-flake8, it will attempt to use python3 from the /usr/local/var/pyenv/shims directory, regardless of your global configuration. You must have flake8 installed with the latest version of python3 on your system in order for the plugin to work.

Uses Homebrew; this makes it easy to switch between Python2 and Python3.

xcode-select --install

brew update
brew install pyenv readline

cat >> $HOME/.bash_profile <<"EOF"
export PYENV_ROOT=/usr/local/var/pyenv
if which pyenv > /dev/null; then eval "$(pyenv init -)"; fi
EOF

source $HOME/.bash_profile
pyenv install --list
pyenv install 2.7.10
pyenv install 3.5.0

pyenv versions
pyenv global 2.7.10
pip install pip --upgrade

Install leiningen

brew install leiningen

Install Application

Install Sublime Text 3.

Create the following symlinks so you can launch SublimeText from the command line:

ln -nsf "/Applications/Sublime Text.app/Contents/SharedSupport/bin/subl" /usr/local/bin/subl

# open current directory in sublimetext to see a treeview
subl .

Install Packages

Install Package Control (ctrl+`):

import urllib.request,os,hashlib; h = '6f4c264a24d933ce70df5dedcf1dcaee' + 'ebe013ee18cced0ef93d5f746d80ef60'; pf = 'Package Control.sublime-package'; ipp = sublime.installed_packages_path(); urllib.request.install_opener( urllib.request.build_opener( urllib.request.ProxyHandler()) ); by = urllib.request.urlopen( 'http://packagecontrol.io/' + pf.replace(' ', '%20')).read(); dh = hashlib.sha256(by).hexdigest(); print('Error validating download (got %s instead of %s), please try manual install' % (dh, h)) if dh != h else open(os.path.join( ipp, pf), 'wb' ).write(by)

Install the following packages (cmd+shift+p: Package Control: Install Package).

Package Purpose
BracketHighlighter Matches a variety of brackets such as: [], (), {}, "", '', #!xml, <tag></tag>, and even custom brackets.
EditorConfig Standardize editor configurations for projects.
Enhanced Clojure Improved code completion for Clojure.
FileDiffs Shows diffs between the current file, or selection(s) in the current file, and clipboard, another file, or unsaved changes.
fish-shell Syntax highlighting and whatnot for fish-shell.
Git Git integration.
GitGutter Show an icon in the gutter area indicating whether a line has been inserted, modified or deleted.
Gradle_Language Gradle language support.
Jedi - Python autocompletion Plugin to the awesome autocomplete library Jedi.
lispindent Properly indents lisp code.
Markdown Preview Preview and build your markdown files quickly in your web browser, supports Python Markdown Parser and Github Markdown.
Origami You tell SublimeText where you want a new pane, and it makes one for you. It works seamlessly alongside the built-in layout commands.
ShellCommand The ShellCommand plugin allows arbitrary shell commands to be run and their output to be sent to buffers or panels.
SublimeLinter A framework for interactive code linting in the Sublime Text 3 editor.
SublimeLinter-contrib-scalastyle This linter plugin for SublimeLinter provides an interface to scalastyle. It will be used with files that have the “scala” syntax.
SublimeLinter-flake8 This linter plugin for SublimeLinter provides an interface to flake8. It will be used with files that have the “Python” syntax.
SublimeLinter-jshint This linter plugin for SublimeLinter provides an interface to jshint. It will be used with files that have the “JavaScript” syntax, or within <script> tags in HTML files.
SublimeLinter-shellcheck This linter plugin for SublimeLinter provides an interface to shellcheck. It will be used with files that have the “Shell-Unix-Generic” syntax (aka Shell Script (Bash)).
SublimeREPL Run an interpreter inside ST2 (Clojure, CoffeeScript, F#, Groovy, Haskell, Lua, MozRepl, NodeJS, Python + virtualenv, R, Ruby, Scala...).
Theme - Soda Dark and light custom UI themes for Sublime Text.
View In Browser Open whatever is in your current view/tab. If the file current open is new and has not been saved a temporary file is created (in your default temp directory for your OS) with the extension of .htm and your browser will open it.
Trailing Spaces Highlights trailing spaces (and lets you delete them in a flash!)

Install Package Helpers

In order for some packages to work properly, they need helper binaries to be installed separately, such as:

brew install scalastyle shellcheck
pip install flake8 jedi
npm install -g jshint

Configure SublimeText

There are a number of configuration tweaks that you will want to make to SublimeText to improve overall behavior. The easiest way to manage this is to establish a dotfiles repository and track changes in source control. See the subl directory for a collection of configuration files; the init-dots.sh script describes how these are linked to the main configuration location on your machine.

After installing the configuration files, quit and restart SublimeText - this is particularly necessary for SublimeLinter to function correctly.

Automate Package Installation

You can automate the installation of Package Control packages on first startup.

Editing Tips

SublimeText has some interesting multi-editing features.

Shortcut Action
ctrl+g Go to line number.
cmd+d Select the next match of the current selection.
cmd+ctrl+g Select all matches of the current selection.
cmd+l Select the next line.
cmd+shift+j Select all child elements within a structured (e.g. HTML) document.
cmd+r Jump to function.
cmd+shift+d Duplicate current line, preserving all indentation.
cmd+ctrl+up Move line up.
cmd+ctrl+down Move line down.
cmd+k,b Hide or show the sidebar.
cmd+click Create multiple cursors.
cmd+p Search for file within project.
cmd+alt+left Go to left tab.
cmd+alt+right Go to right tab.
ctrl+shift+m Select text within brackets (expandable).