Using Vim's persistent undo?

vim undo undo-redo
duckworthd picture duckworthd · Apr 18, 2011 · Viewed 35.3k times · Source

One of the new features in Vim 7.3 is 'persistent undo', which allows for the undotree to be saved to a file when exiting a buffer.

Unfortunately, I haven't quite been able to get it properly enabled, or I must be using it wrong. Here's what I've tried so far:

I added the following to ~/.vimrc

set undofile                " Save undos after file closes
set undodir=$HOME/.vim/undo " where to save undo histories
set undolevels=1000         " How many undos
set undoreload=10000        " number of lines to save for undo

After this, I supposedly should be able to open any file, edit it, then save-close it, and when I open it again I should be able to undo/redo as if I'd never left. Unfortunately, this doesn't seem to be the case, as no undofile is ever written.

Notes:

  1. I'm on Win 7 using Vim 7.3 from the Vim without cream project. Persistent undo is baked-in.

  2. $HOME/.vim/undo exists on my file system

Answer

Matthias Braun picture Matthias Braun · Mar 27, 2014

Put this in your .vimrc to create an undodir if it doesn't exist and enable persistent undo. Tested on both Windows and Linux.

" Put plugins and dictionaries in this dir (also on Windows)
let vimDir = '$HOME/.vim'
let &runtimepath.=','.vimDir

" Keep undo history across sessions by storing it in a file
if has('persistent_undo')
    let myUndoDir = expand(vimDir . '/undodir')
    " Create dirs
    call system('mkdir ' . vimDir)
    call system('mkdir ' . myUndoDir)
    let &undodir = myUndoDir
    set undofile
endif

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