The YCM Extra Configuration

Introduction

YouCompleteMe (most often abbreviated as ‘YCM’) is a revolutionary Vim plugin, but its configuration is a bit … elusive. Luckily I have found l3nkz/ycmconf, which makes my life much easier, especially because I use CMake and clang_complete too. With this plugin, the CMake output or a .clang_complete file will suffice (I prefer the latter), and I do not need to put any .ycm_extra_conf.py files in my code projects any longer. I also do not need to click on the YCM confirmation prompt every time, or configure which .ycm_extra_conf.py files should be considered secure in my .vimrc.

The major problem of l3nkz/ycmconf was that it had not been updated since April 2015, and it stopped working with the latest clangd-based YCM. However, fixing it proved not difficult. I have made it work again (with both an old version and the most recent version of YCM) after making only minor changes. And the result is here.

Installation

Manual installation on Vim 8+

Do something like (commands and directories may require changes under Windows):

mkdir -p ~/.vim/pack/my/start
cd ~/.vim/pack/my/start
git clone https://github.com/adah1972/ycmconf.git

With minpac

Add the following line to your .vimrc (or _vimrc under Windows), after other minpac#add statements:

call minpac#add('adah1972/ycmconf')

If you have defined the PackUpdate command, it is now the time to execute it. Otherwise, manually restart Vim and execute call minpac#update().

With Vundle

Add the following line to your .vimrc (or _vimrc under Windows), after other Plugin statements:

Plugin 'adah1972/ycmconf'

Then restart Vim and run :PluginInstall.

Configuration

Do one of the following:

Put a compile_commands.json file (output by a set(CMAKE_EXPORT_COMPILE_COMMANDS 1) line in CMakeLists.txt) in the source code directory, or one of its parent directories.
Put a .clang_complete file in the source directory, or one of its parent directories.

The first method is more precise, but it does not work if the code directories are shared (absolute paths are used in compile_commands.json).

A sample .clang_complete file can be found in geek_time_cpp. It is quite trivial to maintain.

adah1972 / ycmconf