CODEWITHSUNDEEP
vimsshx11-forwarding
interfect
interfect

Reputation: 2877

From an SSH session to a remote machine, how do I open a file in a Vim session on my local machine

I have an ssh connection to a remote machine in my terminal window, and GVim running locally as my text editor. I can mount the remote machine via SSH and open files in my local Vim. I can also edit remote files in my local Vim via Vim's support for editing over SCP.

Say I then use ag on the remote machine to search my project for a symbol:

[user@remote project]$ ag thingy
include/blah/foo.h
1137:void thingy() {

Now what can I type inside my SSH session to send that file to my local editor in a tab? If I were on my local machine, I could do something like gvim -p --remote-tab-silent include/blah/foo.h, but I don't think the Vim +clientserver Remote system can be forwarded over an SSH session, can it? Would it somehow magically work if I set up X11 forwarding? If so, how would Vim work out what remote server to connect to to edit the file? Is there maybe some kind of integration between a vim-embedded terminal session and the netrw system that I could use instead?

If I wanted to roll my own system with shell scripts and netcat and forwarding sockets of some kind over ssh, how might I design that?

Upvotes: 0

Views: 998

Answers (1)

bk2204
bk2204

Reputation: 76549

The +clientserver mechanism on Linux and Unix systems uses X11:

The communication between client and server goes through the X server. The display of the Vim server must be specified. The usual protection of the X server is used, you must be able to open a window on the X server for the communication to work. It is possible to communicate between different systems.

If you set up X forwarding properly, you should be able to open the file, although I haven't tested. That means that the remote system should have a $DISPLAY environment variable.

If you haven't specified the server name explicitly, it is usually in the title bar of the window. The first one, on my Debian system, is GVIM, the next is GVIM2, etc. Client/server arguments need to go on the command line in a specific order and first on the command line. I'd try setting this up on a local machine and only then trying it with the remote machine.

Upvotes: 1

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