Vim + Pathogen not loading help docs

Question

Currently I use Pathogen to organize my vim plugins. It seems to do this fine and without a hitch but for some reason the helptags are not generated. I don't think my file structure is at fault (although it could be) because as far as I can tell I've set it up correctly, e.g: pathogen.vim is in ~/.vim/autoload and all my plugins are in ~/.vim/bundle

My .vimrc is aliased to the HOME directory so I can quickly find it and open it and the pathogen related part looks like this:

filetype off
call pathogen#runtime_append_all_bundles() 
call pathogen#helptags()

I feel like I've tried every iteration of this I've found on the internet as well and nothing has been successful. The plugins seem to work just fine every time but I can never get the help docs using the helptags. I'm using Mac OSX 10.6 if that helps.

Any advice is appreciated. Thanks.

Solution 1

I had the same problem of not finding the help when updating pathogen - I just had to run the following command to generate the helptags:

:Helptags

If you simply add the line to start pathogen to:

call pathogen#infect()
Helptags

It will generate them on startup and you will have the help as always.

Solution 2

To quote tpope from the vim-pathogen README:

Normally to generate documentation, Vim expects you to run :helptags on each directory with documentation (e.g., :helptags ~/.vim/doc). Provided with pathogen.vim is a :Helptags command that does this on every directory in your 'runtimepath'. If you really want to get crazy, you could even invoke Helptags in your vimrc. I don't like to get crazy.

Solution 3

On 4/13/2011 a :Helptags command was added, which generates help tags along the 'runtimepath'

The preferred way of initializing the plugin is now:

call pathogen#infect()
syntax on
filetype plugin indent on

All this and more in the docs

Comments

[Eric Fortis]

try moving the filetype off below the calls. In other words put pathogen stuff at the top of the .vimrc

[Alex]

The only thing I have above my pathogen calls in my .vimrc is set nocompatible. You might try adding that too.

[Phil Aquilina]

Thanks for your replies guys. So I've moved the pathogen calls up underneath nocompatible. And I also tried moving the filetype off below the calls. Didn't have success in either. It just seems odd to me that Nerd tree loads right up but its help files don't.

[Phil Aquilina]

If there's any other info I can provide to help find a solution, I'll be glad to provide it.

[Phil Aquilina]

Ok I've narrowed the problem down a little. It turns out some of my other plugins help files work. I have four plugins. vim-rails, vim-ruby, EnhancedCommentify, and NerdTree. The help tags work for vim-ruby (:h ft-ruby-omni and :h ft-ruby-syntax) and EnhancedCommentify (:h EnhancedCommentify) but the other two don't work. Really weird.

[Guillermo Siliceo Trueba]

Did you manage to fix this? i'm having the exact same problem.

[Phil Aquilina]

Nope. Haven't looked at it since my last post so the problem still persists. I'm glad I'm not the only one having this problem though. If you find a solution, please post it.

[PJP]

See "Vim helptag generation" for additional information.

[DavisDude]

This may sound really stupid, but for Windows users make sure your bundle files are in vimfiles instead of vim74 or whatever it is. All the plugins will work if they're in vim74, but not :Helptags.

[maxschlepzig]

Possible duplicate of Vim helptag generation

[Phil Aquilina]

Thanks for your reply jinfield. I've tried this code in the past and tried it again after I saw your post. But it wasn't successful.

[satran]

Actually this one worked. The answer provided by jinfeild did not work. Thanks.

[Justin Force]

This doesn't work. It never calls Helptags. @Gjallar's answer works and should be the accepted answer.

[Brady Trainor]

+1 for sharing tpope's humor in the guise of an answer.