Because unit testing a Vim plugin is a pain in the ass.

vader.vim provides a pretty straightforward way to test Vim plugins. But, you'll only be testing on the version of Vim you have installed. Then there's the issue of running automated tests with Travis-CI where you have to either:

• Build Vim from source which takes an eternity, then run your tests.
• Use the version that came with Ubuntu 12.04 which means you're only testing your plugin's ability to run on 7.3.429.

With this base image, you can build the versions you need and reuse them in future tests.

The README is a work in progress. Take a look in the example directory and ubuntu-vims.

You will need to create your own Dockerfile, build an image, then push it to your Docker Hub repository.

FROM tweekmonster/vim-testbed:latest

RUN install_vim -tag v7.3 -name vim73 -build \
                -tag v7.4.052 -name vim74 -build \
                -tag master -build

The install_vim script builds one or more versions of Vim that you would like to use for testing. Each version should be terminated with a -build flag to tell the script to start a build.

The following flags can be used for each build:

docker build -t "your/repository" .

From here you can run your tests locally (as described below), push it to your Docker Hub repository, or setup an automated build.

docker run -it --rm -v $(PWD):/testplugin -v $(PWD)/test:/home "your/repository" vim74 '+Vader! test/*'

The entry point for the container is a script that runs the named Vim version. In this case vim74. Arguments after the name is passed to Vim.

The entry point script prefixes your arguments with -u /home/vimrc -i NONE. They can be overridden with your arguments.

The base image is created with automated testing in mind. It is not meant to be built every time you run tests. An unprivileged user vimtest is used to run Vim to prevent files from being written back to your work directory. This means that it won't be able to download/install plugins into a mapped volume.

To deal with this, your test vimrc could add known paths within the container to rtp, and your Dockerfile could install the plugins into that location.

This image provides a helper script that should be sourced at the top of your vimrc:

source /rtp.vim

It will add /home/vim and /home/vim/after to the runtime path, and search for plugins in /home/plugins.

Two volumes are provided: