Syntastic is a syntax checking plugin for vim that supports many different languages. I decided to give it a try in my current vim setup for my current projects written in python. Additionally, I decided to try out flake8, a wrapper for pyflakes, pep8 and mccabe.
Setting up flake8 is simple, just execute
$ pip install flake8
To install syntastic follow the instructions on the github page here (if you're not using pathogen, to manage your vim plugins you should). In your vimrc file add these lines
let g:syntastic_check_on_open=1
let g:syntastic_python_checker="flake8"
See the README file for instructions on how to use syntastic.
Caveat
There is a bug in vim that causes a segfault when you execute wq in vim and have a single python source file and the errors window open. Supposedly this was fixed in vim 7.3.449, however, I am using vim 7.3.608 and the bug is still present. Some simple workarounds are:
- close the errors window before quitting vim
- have multiple source files open
The bug is still annoying though and will hopefully be fixed at some point.