NetBeans is the only IDE with a great VI key binding plugin. This was the sole reason I switched to NetBeans as my Ruby/Rails IDE of choice this year. There are 2 vi plugins for Eclipse: one you have to pay for and the other relies on gVIM. The NetBeans Vi plugin is called jVi and can be found at http://jvi.sourceforge.net. There are a few caveats and extra configuration options that you need to set.

1. Download the latest jVi release. Unzip the file in your home directory. This will create the directory nbvi-1.2.6.
2. In the Netbeans menu bar, select Tools | Plugins. Click on the Downloaded tab.
3. Press the “Add Plugin” button. Browse to the nbvi-1.2.6 directory and select the two file: org-netbeans-modules-jvi.nbm and com-raelity-jvi.nbm. You should now have 2 plugins availabe in the downloaded list: jVi Key Bindings and jVi Core.
4. Click Install and then click through the installation process. NetBeans will need to restart.
5. After NetBeans has restarted, from the menu bar, select Tools | Options. Click on the last tab which should be jVi Config.
6. Select the “Buffer Modifications” panel in the jVi Config screen.
7. Make sure the ‘expandtab’ value is checked.
8. Change the value of ‘shiftwidth’ to 2.
9. Change the value of ‘tabstop’ to 2.

The last option for setting the tabstop and expandtab are pretty important. If you don’t use these, jVi will insert tabs into your Ruby files. This could cause your co-workers to complain about you ruining the formatting in the project.

Congratuations, jVi is now setup in NetBeans. Enjoy.

This blog entry was written for NetBeans 6.7 and with jVi version 1.2.6.