I feel like I’ve literally tried everything, but no matter what I add to vimrc, I can’t get it to store its annoying .swp files in /tmp. I’m using Ubuntu 16.04. I’ve obviously looked up this issue extensively, but again, no command I enter seems to work. I always end up with:
E510: Can't make backup file (add ! to override)
Things I’ve tried:
set backupdir=$~/tmp// set directory=$~/tmp// set backupdir=~/tmp// set backupdir=$HOME~/tmp// set backupdir=/tmp//
I mean you name it, I’ve tried it. So, explicitly, what is the exact code I need to type in vimrc to make it so vim saves it’s .swp files in my temporary folder, instead of cluttering my workspace?
Thank you.
Advertisement
Answer
Adding the following line to my ~/.vimrc puts .swp files for currently open buffers under /tmp
set directory=/tmp
If you’ve tried this without issues are you able to verify that vim is reading your vimrc at all?