Vim, GDB

In this aspect, Emacs has a better GDB interface. The best interface for using GDB with vim seems to be the clewn project. The installation is fairly easy. This page describes the process of installing and using gdb with vim. However, Clewn works only with gvim and not with vim. If you are using vim on a console, you need to recompile vim with vimgdb patch. The process is described on the Clewn webpage. You can click here . This option is little cumbersome as one has to download the source and compile it with the vimgdb patch. Since I like gvim, I prefer to use clewn.

VIM, auto Completion

IF you are only interested in auto-completing long words as you type, then you look here.   Basically it says :

The function A_Very_Long_Function_Name() can be quite exasperating to type over and over again. While still in insert-mode, one can auto-complete a word by either searching forwards or backwards. In function, Another_Function() one can type A_Very... and hit CTRL-P. The first matching word will be displayed first. In this case it would be A_Very_Long_Variable_Name. To complete it correctly, one can hit CTRL-Pagain and the search continues upwards to the next matching word, which is A_Very_Long_Function_Name. As soon as the correct word is matched you can continue typing. VIM remains in insert-mode during the entire process.




However, if you are interested in having declarations for all functions available in C++ or in a library, you need to use ctags.  A very good explanation of the process to set it up is available here. It is quite long. I would just enumerate the steps for the sake of brevity. I tried it on both Debian 5.0 and Ubuntu 9.10 and it works perfectly. 

1. Install exuberant-ctags
   
   $ sudo apt-get install ctags
   
   
2. Download omnicppcomplete package and extract the zip file into your ~/.vim/ folder. After this .vim folder should look something like this. It may contain other folders depending on the original content of your .vim folder. IF you don't have a .vim folder in your home directory, then create now.
   
   $ cd ~/.vim
   $ ls
   after  autoload  doc  ftplugin omnicppcomplete-0.41.zip
   
   
3. Generate tags for C++ . ctags generates a file called "tags". You should rename it to something like "cpp.tags". You can have different such files for different libraries.
   
   $ ctags -R --c++-kinds=+p --fields=+iaS --extra=+q /usr/include/c++
   $ mv tags cpp.tags
   
4. Now add following lines to ~/.vimrc file
   
   set tags+=~/.vim/cpp.tags
   set nocp
   filetype plugin on
   map  :!ctags -R --c++-kinds=+p --fields=+iaS --extra=+q .
   
   Last command maps CTRL-F6 to generate tags in the current directory directly from vim editor.
   
   
5. Open Vim and run following command to see the help files related omnicomplete.
   
   :helptags $HOME/.vim/doc
   :h omnicppcomplete
   
   

Printing text files : a2ps

Usually it is easier to convert a text file directly into PS files and then into a pdf file. 


$ a2ps -R  -1 -o abc.ps abc.cpp
$ ps2pdf abc.ps abc.pdf 

-1 :  Predefined layout: 1 x 1 portrait, 80 chars/line, major rows (i.e. alias for `--columns=1 --rows=1 --portrait --chars-per-line=80 --major=rows').

-o : Output file

Installing Debian Lenny from a USB flash disk

I tried the instructions available at this link and it worked for me. I will just summarize the steps that I followed .  I am assuming that your flash disk is identified as /dev/sdf by your system. (Check dmesg output). If you have a bigger disk, you can create multiple partitions using fdisk. We will use /dev/sdf1 for our discussion.

1. Create a Fat16 partition using fdisk. Some information about this is available here.
   
   # umount /dev/sdf1
   # mkdosfs /dev/sdf1
   
   
2. Use syslinux as a boot loader
   
   # syslinux /dev/sdf1
   
   
3. Download the current Debian hd-media installer images from here.  Download vmlinuz, initrd.gz from this page.
   
   
4. Download the current Debian netinstall cd image from here.  Note that the versions of these two images must match.
   
   
5. Copy necessary files into the disk
   
   # mount /dev/sdf1 /mnt/usb
   # cp vmlinuz /mnt/usb/
   # cp initrd.gz /mnt/usb/
   # cp debian-504-i386-netinst.iso /mnt/usb
   
   
6. Create 'syslinux.cfg' file inside /mnt/usb/ containing following lines :
   
   default vmlinuz
   append initrd=initrd.gz
   
   
7. Now unmount the usb disk and fix or create the mbr
   
   # umount /dev/sdf1
   #install-mbr /dev/sdf
   
   
8. Now plug into the system where you want to install Debian. You need to select USB device as your first boot device.