Sublime Text has been my editor of choice for a couple years now—I’m not even going to begin to get into the specifics of why in this post, but one of the things that sets it apart is its rich plugin ecosystem. Here are a few of the plugins that I’d hate to work without.
Package Control
The package manager that should have shipped with Sublime. Installing plugins in vanilla ST involves searching the internet, finding downloads of the plugins you want, and then dragging and dropping them manually into Sublime’s folder. Uninstalling requires finding and deleting the plugin’s folders. With package control, it’s possible to see a list of installed plugins, search a database, and install from within the program. This isn’t something I use often, but it’s useful to have when you’re first getting situated. (Hint: You can use command+P to directly install any of the other plugins I mention here.)
Vintageous
Practically perfect vim emulation. There are a lot of things out there that attempt to emulate vim. Most of them get the basic cursor navigation right, but miss out on some of the more obscure features. Sublime actually ships with a built-in “Classic Mode” that falls into this category.
Vintageous, on the other hand, is a cut above. It gets all of the basic cursor navigation commands, but it also has the advanced features down, like recording macros and multiple buffers. It can be combined with ST’s built-in multiple cursor support for some extra fun on top of what you can do with straight vim.
Sublime Linter
A hook that shows warning and error messages in the gutter of a file depending on any errors or style issues in its code. The plugin is a bit of a pain to configure—you’ll need to install a separate linter plugin per language and make sure there’s an executable for each language on your system’s path. When configured, however, it makes it much easier to catch simple mistakes and write cleaner code.
Git Gutter
It shows green “+,” purple arrows, and purple dots next to lines in a file depending on the status of those lines in git. This is something I never would have thought to look for, but it’s been immensely useful for me to be able to glance at a file and know exactly what I’ve touched since the last commit.
All Autocomplete
Sublime’s autocomplete feature now works from any open file, instead of just the current one. In my opinion, this really should have been built-in.
Base16 Color Scheme
My favorite color scheme. It comes in a variety of flavors—I prefer default light.
Are you familiar with all of these plugins? Which others make your job easier?
Thanks for posting. I abandoned vintage mode a while back in frustration. I hadn’t come across Vintageous. So far it seems to be a much better approach.