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Using VIM for Python IDE in Windows?

I am turning to Python from .NET world. And Visual Studio was something a great tool i used.
In python world we do have basic IDLE and another one is VIM. I have seen that a lot of developers have configured VIM to a great IDE. Using basic VIM in Windows 7 seems of less use.
So i want to moderate my VIM to a level which has file explorer, syntax highlighting, search, error highlighting etc. So that it gives feel of Visual Studio and more productive.
But all hacks/tips available are for Linux/Ubuntu users mostly, which i may use later but as of now i need to make my VIM in Windows more productive, visual.
Please Suggest some Tips/Hacks/Resources to look around for VIM configuration?
Thanks

This question addresses your low level issue: coding Python with an IDE that is not VS.
There are a few popular blog posts addressing your high level issue: setting up Vim for Python development. They are a quick google away…
I feel the need to point out that Vim is not an IDE. You can customize it a lot and end up with something that looks like an IDE but you won't get an IDE. Only an over-customized text editor.
Anyway, here are a few tips for starting out with Vim:
Do $ vimtutor as many times as needed to feel comfortable with the basics.
Get familiar with Vim's buit-in documentation: the answers to most of your questions are somewhere inside. :help gets you to the front page, :help 'option' shows the documentation for option, :help :command shows the documentation for command… Hit <C-]> on a colored word to jump to its definition.
Don't use Janus or SPF13 or whatever pre-packaged set of plugins. You'll only grow bad habits. Similarly, don't copy other people's vimrc wholesale.
Ctags is an external code indexer that is used by Vim to "jump to definition" with <C-]>. cscope is another option, it's more powerful but also a little more complex. See :help tags.
Related to ctags, TagList and TagBar are two popular plugins used to display more or less the equivalent of the Object Browser in VS.
NERDTree is another popular plugin that mimicks the file tree found in many IDEs/editors. But Vim comes with netrw (:Ex) by default, try it before installing NERDTree.
Read :help motion.txt as soon as possible.
Watch Drew Neil's laser-guided vimcasts.
Don't rush it.

you can use vim plugins on windows, http://www.vim.org/scripts/index.php, typing "vim {your feature here}" into google will come up with lots of results.
popular file explorer is nerdtree,
syntax highlighting can be turned on with
syntax on in your vimrc
searching open file is easy to do using reg exes . Initialize search with /.
Searching directory is easy to do using grep.
I don't develop on windows but i have read that Cygwin might be worth installing for some linux tools if not already installed.

I am in no way an evangelist of any Editor/IDE.
But, if you are a newbie to Python I would suggest trying out Sublime Text 2 http://www.sublimetext.com/ . It is a very light weight yet powerful editor with a great following and it has a free evaluation version with no deadline.
But, if you intend to work using frameworks such as Django/ GAE then I would suggest using PyCharm from JetBrains
http://www.jetbrains.com/pycharm/
Finally, these tools are all just personal choices until you get comfortable with one or two of them.
Thanks,
-Hari

One possible compromise is to use your favorite IDE with a vim emulator plugin. For example, in Eclipse you can use Vrapper, PyCharm has IdeaVim and so forth. Lighttable also has vim key-bindings. The plug-ins (or key-binding options) give you some of the benefits of editing in Vim while still having the powerful debugging / navigation features, etc. of a full-blown IDE. BTW, Vrapper works with PyDev.
Using an emulator in an IDE allows you to gain the "muscle-memory" necessary for effective vim editing, without getting bogged down in "configuration hell" associated with turning an editor into an IDE (which auto-complete plugin do I use?..etc.?). Once you have mastered the vim keystrokes for normal and visual mode, used along with insert mode, you may decide to continue on into pure Vim and face those issues.

I wouldn't recommend to learn VIM in 2012 (despite it being a great editor). If you must, this blog post will get you started.
But VIM isn't an IDE, it's a text editor.
If you really want a powerful IDE, try IntelliJ IDEA or Eclipse. Both have great plugins to turn them into Python IDEs (along with code completion and all the other nice time savers). For Eclipse, try PyDev. For IntelliJ, search for Python in the plugin preferences pages.

Python Code Completion

After using C# for long time I finally decided to switch to Python.
The question I am facing for the moment has to do about auto-complete.
I guess I am spoiled by C# and especially from resharper and I was expecting something similar to exist for Python.
My editor of choice is emacs and after doing some research I found autocomplete.pl, yasnippet and rope although it is not clear to me if and how they can be installed in a cygwin based system which is what I use since all the related documentation appears to be linux specific...
The version of emacs I currently use is 23.2.1 which bundles the python mode that although useful is far behind from whatever research has to offer.
My question to python users has to do about how common is autocomplete vs manual typing (using M-/ where possible) ?
I am thinking about just memorizing python build-in functions like len, append, extend etc. and revert close to a pre-autocomplete editing mode. How different such an approach is from what other pythonistas are doing?

I found this post
My Emacs Python environment
to be the most useful and comprehensive list of instructions and references on how to setup a decent Python development environment in Emacs regardless of OS platform. It is still a bit of work to setup but at least it covers the popular packages and components generally recommended for Python in Emacs that provide auto-completion functionality.
I loosely used this post as a guide to do the setup on my Windows machine with Emacs 23.2.1 and Python 2.6.5. Although, I also have Cygwin installed in some cases instead of running the *nix shell commands mentioned in the post, I just download the packages via a web browser, unzip them with 7zip, and copy them to my Emacs' plugin directory.
Also, to install Pymacs, Rope, and Ropemacs, I used Python's EasyInstall package manager. To use it, I downloaded and installed the setuptools package using the Windows install version. Once installed, at the command line, cd to their respective download locations and run the command
easy_install .
instead of the shell commands shown in the post.
Generally, I saved any *.el files in my ~\.emacs.d\plugins (e.g. in %USERPROFILE%\Application Data\.emacs.d\) and then updated my .emacs file to reference them as documented in the post.
Despite all this, on occasion, I've used DreamPie since it does have overall better auto-completion out of the box than my Emacs setup.

I'm spoiled by Intellisense too. The PyDev extensions for Eclipse offer a pretty good auto-complete substitute.

I find that PyDev + Eclipse can meet most of my needs. There is also PyCharm from the Intellij team. PyCharm has the added advantage of smooth integration with git.

I've been using PyScripter, an IDE for Windows, for a while now, and have found it very good. It has autocompletion among many other features. It's written in Delphi -- not that there's anything wrong with that -- it just bothers me a bit, though...

Take a look at Spyderlib, support most of the features including code completion

IMO, by far the easiest way to take advantage of the python tools available for emacs is to take advantage of the defaults that are all set up at:
https://github.com/gabrielelanaro/emacs-for-python
I actually took the time to get pymacs and ropemacs and python-mode all working independently before finding that little gem, and now I rely on it entirely for all my python based customizations. If you are new, I would definitely start there.

How do I set up a Python development environment on Linux?

I'm a .NET developer who knows very little about Python, but want to give it a test drive for a small project I'm working on.
What tools and packages should I install on my machine? I'm looking for a common, somewhat comprehensive, development environment.
I'll likely run Ubuntu 9.10, but I'm flexible. If Windows is a better option, that's fine too.
Edit: To clarify, I'm not looking for the bare minimum to get a Python program to run. I wouldn't expect a newbie .NET dev to use notepad and a compiler. I'd recommend Visual Studio, NUnit, SQL Server, etc.

Your system already has Python on it. Use the text editor or IDE of your choice; I like vim.
I can't tell you what third-party modules you need without knowing what kind of development you will be doing. Use apt as much as you can to get the libraries.
To speak to your edit:
This isn't minimalistic, like handing a .NET newbie notepad and a compiler: a decent text editor and the stdlib are all you really need to start out. You will likely need third-party libraries to develop whatever kind of applications you are writing, but I cannot think of any third-party modules all Python programmers will really need or want.
Unlke the .NET/Windows programming world, there is no one set of dev tools that stands above all others. Different people use different editors a whole lot. In Python, a module namespace is fully within a single file and project organization is based on the filesystem, so people do not lean on their IDEs as hard. Different projects use different version control software, which has been booming with new faces recently. Most of these are better than TFS and all are 1000 times better than SourceSafe.
When I want an interactive session, I use the vanilla Python interpreter. Various more fancy interpreters exist: bpython, ipython, IDLE. bpython is the least fancy of these and is supposed to be good about not doing weird stuff. ipython and IDLE can lead to strange bugs where code that works in them doens't work in normal Python and vice-versa; I've seen this first hand with IDLE.
For some of the tools you asked about and some others
In .NET you would use NUnit. In Python, use the stdlib unittest module. There are various third-party extensions and test runners, but unittest should suit you okay.
If you really want to look into something beyond this, get unittest2, a backport of the 2.7 version of unittest. It has incorporated all the best things from the third-party tools and is really neat.
In .NET you would use SQL Server. In Python, you may use PostgreSQL, MySQL, sqlite, or some other database. Python specifies a unified API for databases and porting from one to another typically goes pretty smoothly. sqlite is in the stdlib.
There are various Object Relational Models to make using databases more abstracted. SQLAlchemy is the most notable of these.
If you are doing network programming, get Twisted.
If you are doing numerical math, get numpy and scipy.
If you are doing web development, choose a framework. There are about 200000: Pylons, zope, Django, CherryPy, werkzeug...I won't bother starting an argument by recommending one. Most of these will happily work with various servers with a quick setting.
If you want to do GUI development, there are quite a few Python bindings. The stdlib ships with Tk bindings I would not bother with. There are wx bindings (wxpython), GTK+ bindings (pygtk), and two sets of Qt bindings. If you want to do native Windows GUI development, get IronPython and do it in .NET. There are win32 bindings, but they'll make you want to pull your hair out trying to use them directly.

In order to reduce the chance of effecting/hosing the system install of python, I typically install virtualenv on the ubuntu python install. I then create a virtualenv in my home directory so that subsequent packages I install via pip or easy_install do not effect the system installation. And I add the bin from that virtualenv to my path via .bashrc
$ sudo apt-get install python-virtualenv
$ virtualenv --no-site-packages ~/local
$ PATH=~/local/bin:$PATH #<----- add this to .bashrc to make it permanent
$ easy_install virtualenv #<--- so that project environments are based off your local environment rather than the system, probably not necessary
Install your favorite editor, I like emacs + rope, but editors are a personal preference and there are plenty of choices.
When I start a new project/idea I create a new virtual environment for that project, so that I don't effect dependencies anywhere else. Since I would hate for some of my projects to break due to an upgrade of a library both that project and the new one depends on.
~/projects $ virtualenv --no-site-packages my_new_project.env
~/projects/my_new_project.env $ source bin/activate
(my_new_project.env)~/projects/my_new_project.env $ easy_install paste ipython #whatever else I think I need
(my_new_project.env)~/projects/my_new_project.env $ emacs ./ & # start hacking
When creating a new package...in order to have something that will be easy_installable/pippable use paster create
(my_new_project.env)~/projects/my_new_project.env$ paster create new_package
(my_new_project.env)~/projects/my_new_project.env/new_package$ python setup.py develop new_package
That's the common stuff as far as I can think of it. Everything else would be editor/version control tool specific

Since I'm accustomed to Eclipse, I find Eclipse + PyDev convenient for Python. For quick computations, Idle is great.
I've used Python on Windows and on Ubuntu, and Linux is much cleaner.

If you launch a terminal and type python you'll get an interpreter, where you can start trying stuff.
Just in case you haven't seen it, check out the book Dive Into Python, is free on-line.
http://www.diveintopython.org/
Follow the examples in the book using the interpreter.
For storing your work you could use any editor; Vim or EMACS could be the most powerful, but also the most difficult to learn at first. If you want a more "traditional" IDE, you could try WingIDE.
http://www.wingware.com/
After you start to get more comfortable with python you should try an enhanced interpreter; try ipython.
http://ipython.scipy.org/moin/
When you start to develop a more serious project you'll need to get additional modules. Here you have two options; 1) Use your distribution tools to install additional modules; or 2) Download the modules you need directly from their sites and install them manually. You'll be responsible to upgrade them of course.
You'll have to decide for yourself which way to go. Personally I prefer to download and install additional modules manually.

Python (duh), setuptools or pip, virtualenv, and an editor. I suggest geany, but that's just me. And of course, any other Python modules you'll need.

Getting to Python from .NET world
Jumping into the Linux world from a .NET / WIndows background can be a bit disconcerting (but I do encourage you to keep trying Linux)
But I would suggest to anyone coming from Windows, to stick with Windows for a little while. goto www.Activestate.com and download their Python package - it includes the full win32com extentions by Mark Hammond and it also includes a complete, fast IDE "pythonwin"
I have done real professional development with just this setup alone on a windows box - one 14MB .msi and off you go !
Now to use Python on the DLR (Dynamic common language runtime) you need to download IronPython. THis is a seperate interpreter, that was also originally written by Mark Hammond at Microsoft and is at ironpython.org.
With this you can run code like (from wikipedia) ::
import clr
clr.AddReference("System.Windows.Forms")
from System.Windows.Forms import MessageBox
MessageBox.Show("Hello World")
Now you can access any .NET code from python.

If you're just starting out with Python, I'd actually argue against bringing in the complexity of virtualenv (which I think can be pretty overwhelming), at least until you've got a firm grasp of Python basics (especially regarding library/dependency management).
If you're using Ubuntu and the Gnome desktop environment, gedit is the default (gui) text editor, and has great support for Python built in. So my recommendation is to start with the pre-installed Python and gedit (which is pretty extensible on its own).

You don't need much. Python comes with "Batteries Included."
Visual Studio == IDLE. You already have it. If you want more IDE-like environment, install Komodo Edit.
NUnit == unittest. You already have it in the standard library.
SQL Server == sqlite. You already have it in the standard library.
Stop wasting time getting everything ready. It's already there in the basic Python installation.
Get to work.
Linux, BTW, is primarily a development environment. It was designed and built by developers for developers. Windows is an end-user environment which has to be supplemented for development.
Linux was originally focused on developers. All the tools you need are either already there or are part of simple yum or RPM installs.

You would probably like to give NetBeans Python IDE a shot. You can choose to use either Windows/Linux.

Database: sqlite (inbuilt). You might want SQLAlchemy though.
GUI: tcl is inbuilt, but wxPython or pyQt are recommended.
IDE: I use idle (inbuilt) on windows, TextMate on Mac, but you might like PyDev. I've also heard good things about ulipad.
Numerics: numpy.
Fast inline code: lots of options. I like boost weave (part of scipy), but you could look into ctypes (to use dlls), Cython, etc.
Web server: too many options. Django (plus Apache) is the biggest.
Unit testing: inbuilt.
Pyparsing, just because.
BeautifulSoup (or another good HTML parser).
hg, git, or some other nice VC.
Trac, or another bug system.
Oh, and StackOverflow if you have any questions.

Pycharm Community is worth to try.

Best way to have full Python install under cygwin/XP?

Pythons installed under WinXP have dirs like DLLs, DOC, include, etc. but python (2.5) installed with cygwin is a bare python.exe. My motivation for asking is that 'things' under XP don't seem to be finding 'other things' under cygwin and vice versa, I want to start developing with Qt, I like shells, and I do not like MS; I thought if I got all the components under one roof, I could finally start to have scripts find executables which could find files and such. 1. Can I simply copy the contents of an XP installation into the cygwin tree? 2. Is the XP flavor of Python different from the cygwin flavor? (Same CPU, he pointed out, naively.) 3. Someone must work with a full-fledged (if snakes had feathers...) Python from within cygwin; how is it done?
Disclaimer 1: I have never compiled anything under XP or cygwin; had hoped not to have to go there, hence, python in the first place. Disclaimer 2: sorry if this is a ServerFault question, but they seemed to be system people over there and this is (in my case) a lowly desktop.

I use Python from within cygwin, but I don't use the version that cygwin gives you the option of installing as I don't have the control over version number used that I need (we use an older version at work). I have my python version installed via the windows installer (the xp version as you put it) and add the /cygdrive/c/Python2x directory to my PATH environment variable.

Well, in my windows environment I use active python and it, so far, works for me.

Just a little off the question, but...
Have you considered running Sun's VirtualBox with Fedora or Ubuntu inside of it? I'm assuming you have to / need to use windows because you still are, but don't like it. Then you would have python running inside a native linux desktop without any of the troubles you mentioned.
And if you want something that is really easy and portable, then just use Python on Windows, not mixed in with cygwin.
$0.02

This probably has little value, but... I found myself in this exact situation -- we use ActivePython2.5 in production (pure windows environment) and I was trying to do my development within cygwin and cygwin's Python...
After ripping out half of my hair, I have now switched over to Console2, gvim, iPython and ActivePython2.5.
I'm less than thrilled dealing with Windows tools (and their concomitant warts), but at least I'm not getting in my own way when it comes to development. For a while I found I was spending more time trying to get my tools to play nice than actually getting any work done.
Good luck on this one.

I accidentally stumbled on this - If I launch Cygwin from the Cygwin.bat file (which is present directly under the main folder), I get access to the Python version installed under Cygwin (i.e 2.6.8)
If I instead launch the Cygwin from bash.exe under bin directory (C:\Cygwin\bin\bash.exe for me), running "Python -V" shows that I have access to 2.7.3 version of Python (that was installed for Windows).
So, I guess you can do the same.

New to Python. Need info on the environment for it

I'm a complete newbie to Python. I've worked on PHP/JavaScript earlier but starting today I'm moving onto Python. I have no idea about the environment needed for it. I could use some suggestions on it for me to get started.

Under Unix, Emacs is a good choice, to which I always come back, because it is convenient to have a single editor for everything, and because it's open source.
What is best for you depends on your past experience with IDEs. I'd say: stick with what you've been using, or take this opportunity to try an even better IDE.
Note: Python comes with Idle, which is a very simple (if limited) IDE.

Be sure to check out IPython. It's an enhanced interactive python shell with a bunch of useful features such as Tab-Completion using introspection (eg, type "my_object." to see a list of its attributes and methods), logging your interactive session to an executable python-file, defining macros, etc. The documentation page has a link to the tutorial as well as screencasts showing it in action.

On my mac/Linux machines, python came pre-installed. On windows I use both jython under the eclipse IDE and ActivePython with their IDE/eclipse.   With eclipse you'll want PyDev.

It all depends on what you are looking for and what you are already using.
For instance, if you are using a more 'simple' editor at the moment: as long as it's got Python syntax you've got the basics.
If you are used to e.g. Eclipse you can just continue to use that, combined with Pydev. Besides syntax highlighting you'll also get more fancy features to help you debug and refactor your code.
Personally I use Emacs with python-mode (and a few other modes to interface with Subversion and Git). In the past I used Vim which also worked quite well.
My advice would be to start out with your current environment as long as it has some rudimentary support for Python. Once you are familiar with the language, start exploring what your environment is missing and either add it or if you cannot, switch to an enviroment which does support the feature.

I use gvim with some plugin in order to have better support for python.
If you like IDE, look at wing IDE wich is the best I have tested so far. Especially the debuger included is really helpful.

The Python Beginner's Guide and the official Python Tutorial both seem like good places to start.

Geany is a good option for a Linux setup, it's intellisense isn't that great but syntax highlighting is good and it can compile your code directly from inside the editor, plus it handles other languages such as C/C++, PHP, Java etc... Eric is another popular choice as it's a full IDE and I know some people use Eclipse.
On windows I use Notepad++, but it's mostly because I like text editors instead of fully blown IDE's.
Reference wise Daniel's choices are very good places to start, also check out Green Tea Press who do free computer books, there are two Python choices on there but the "Python for Software Design" book hasn't yet been published properly although you can download the manuscript. The "How to Think Like a Computer Scientist" book is a good one and not as scary as it sounds.

IDLE is nice to try out things. Other tools that people like are Eclipse with the Pydev plugin which seems to work ok, although it has crashed a few times (Eclipse, that is) and NetBeans (which I haven't tried) but some people seem to like.

I can only help you if you're running a Mac. Download Xcode. I believe that Python 2.3 comes bundled with these development tools. Luckily enough, this is all you really need to get started, unless you want a newer version of Python.
All you need to do is open up Terminal and type python. You're done!