cheat / so

Companion binary for `vim-so`

so

so is a companion binary to vim-so. It queries the Stack Overflow API, and makes code snippets available to vim-so.

Installing

Download the newest release from Releases and manually install it on your system PATH.

FAQ

Why is this executable necessary?

vim-so must query the Stack Overflow API for code snippets, yet vim provides no native mechanism for making HTTP requests. This executable bridges that gap.

Why is this executable not bundled with vim-so?

This executable is approximately 6Mb in size. In order to support multiple platforms (currently six in total), vim-so would need to contain a compiled executable for each, and I do not wish to release a ~40Mb vim plugin.

Why was this not written in Python?

I have had significant difficulty in the past maintaining Python software that is distributed among a wide user-base. I'm sidestepping that problem by distributing an executable.

Can I use this to "manually" search Stack Overflow on the command-line?

Not in a convenient way. The executable only outputs JSON.

Why not?

Initially, I intended for so to support that use-case. However, I backed away from that goal upon realizing two things:

1. It is difficult to display a Stack Overflow thread on the command line with a user-experience that is equivalent to the browser. The browser provides a superior experience.

2. Signficantly: I've found that search engines do a better job of returning relevant Stack Overflow threads than Stack Overflow's own API. If the API doesn't return an adequate response, your preferred search engine will likely do a better job.

With that being said, if you're interested in doing this anyway, you may wish to check out the how2 project.

So is this tool useless?

I don't think so. It's imperfect, but seems to get the job done about 50% of the time. And when it works, it feels a bit magical.

What else should I know?

You shouldn't waste your time asking Stack Overflow the same question more than once. After you've gotten an answer from Stack Overflow - either via vim-so or your web-browser - you should cache it locally using cheat and vim-cheat.