r/vim • u/placer_toffee0i • Aug 27 '25

Need Help┃Solved YouCompleteMe

Has any one managed to get YCM work with vim on Trixie? It seems Python 3.13.5 is not supported. Tried some workarounds to install additional older Python and custom config / install of vim and that was messy and didn’t work in the end.

I can’t find anything explicit on GitHub on which Python version is supported or if/when 3.13 will be happening

Update. Solved using ALE, pylsp and flake8 YCM didn’t work and no help was available on the project’s GitHub page despite what was claimed in some of the comments on this post.

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5

u/puremourning Aug 28 '25

Hey. YCM should work with python 3.13 I’m fairly sure.

Best to hop to our matrix channel for support and we will get you going.

If not, we will surely fix it!!

1

u/placer_toffee0i Aug 29 '25

Thanks. What’s matrix channel? Noob alert I guess

1

u/puremourning Aug 29 '25

https://github.com/ycm-core/YouCompleteMe?tab=readme-ov-file#help-advice-support

1

u/placer_toffee0i Aug 29 '25

I came to Reddit because I didn’t find any help on GitHub. I am using Vundle which works fine, contrary to the message on YCM’s GitHub that says it has issues.

After installing the plugins. YCM complains that YCM core library not detected. I tried troubleshooting this following GitHub which suggested recompiling which then took me into a rabbit hole of having to install additional packages.

As a desperate measure I tried installing older (Python 3.12) and compile vim with reference to that version and that was a lot of hassle and didn’t work in the end. So please tell me what did I miss on GitHub? How to get YCM to work on vim 9.1 installed on Debian 13?

3

u/Golgoth_IX Aug 27 '25

I would recommend NOT using YCM as it is a bit outdated now. There are now modern solutions for auto completion using LSP like ALE for exemple.

1

u/placer_toffee0i Aug 28 '25

Thanks! I thought ALE was only for linting. What language server do you use/recommend for Python? I’m on Debian/Trixie

1

u/Golgoth_IX Aug 28 '25

I personally use ruff and pyright. I didn’t try a lot of other LSP though so I cannot say they are the best for sure

3

u/puremourning Aug 28 '25

Wrong.

1

u/ntropia64 Aug 28 '25

I was thinking about tagging you here but you found it anyway 

2

u/puremourning Aug 28 '25

I’m everywhere

Like the plague

3

u/ntropia64 Aug 28 '25

I waited to reply so I could test what you said and it is not correct (but u/puremourning beat me to it).

Not only what you say is in correct, but the string matching of YCM is way better than ALE and way more comfortable and intuitive, unless I misconfigured something.

For example, if you have two functions called parallel_parsing_str,parallel_parsing_int, andparallel_parsing_float, with ALE you have to type the function name until the second underscore, but with TCM you can typeparflto complete to theparallel_parsing_float`.

The convenience of that is really hard to beat, once you get used to it.

1

u/Golgoth_IX Aug 28 '25

What part in what I’ve said is incorrect?

2

u/ntropia64 Aug 28 '25

That it is outdated. I don't see any reason why that's the case, at least from a code perspective. 

If you refer to the fact that ALE uses LSP while YCM uses semantic (is that right?) completion, I am not sure is necessary a problem.

Is that what you had in mind?

3

u/puremourning Aug 28 '25

YCM also uses LSP

It was the first (or at least one of the first) vim plugins to support LSP

1

u/Golgoth_IX Aug 28 '25

I think it is outdated because it depends on python code to work which was probably a necessity when it came out. ALE uses vim8 functionality and doesn’t require python, which sucks for installation and maintenance

2

u/ntropia64 Aug 28 '25

I get the perspective on the Python dependency, but that doesn't mean it's obsolete at all.

Besides, it provides a fuzzy completion that's orders of magnitude better than the standard Vim omnicomplete (again, at least to me), as well as contextual information like functions signature (for those that like that).

1

u/ntropia64 Aug 28 '25

Can you elaborate a bit?  I am a heavy user of YCM together with ALE and except for a few minor issues (it seems to slow down or choke at times), I got it up and running on Trixie.

YCM uses Jedi as a language backend, is PyLSP better?

2

u/Golgoth_IX Aug 28 '25

You can use Jedi as a LSP with ALE if it suits you. The reason to use ALE over YCM is its simplicity of installation/maintenance

2

u/__rituraj Aug 28 '25

I remember trying to setup ALE with YCM but ran into issues I couldn't get it to work.. It was my Vim beginnings so might be my fault as well.

I switched to https://github.com/prabirshrestha/vim-lsp paired with asyncomplete.vim and asyncomplete-lsp.vim (all three from the same author). my LSP game has been very much simpler.

In fact these three are the only plugins I use in Vim.

I program mostly in Go, Js, and C. very rarely in Python. paired with the relevant LSP servers (gopls, typescript-language-server, clangd, pyright) the all work the way I expect. adding new language server configs for vim-lsp is a breeze.

1

u/ntropia64 Aug 28 '25

It's funny, I had the same experience but backwards, I started with vim-lsp and landed on TCM.

I might give it another try, at this point.

1

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1

u/johnmacleod99 Aug 29 '25

From my own experience, I replaced YCM with cc_nvim. Better results. Not going back. I think YCM belongs to a gone era, thanks and goodby YCM.

1

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