Rooter is a Vim plugin which changes the working directory to the project root when you open a file.

More accurately, it'll do this when you open a typical webapp file. These files are identified by their extension.

The project root is identified by the presence of a DVCS directory. Currently git, darcs, mercurial and bazaar are supported.

By default you don't need to do anything: vim-rooter will change the working directory automatically.

You can always invoke vim-rooter manually with <Leader>cd.

You can change the manual-invocation mapping by adding this to your .vimrc:

map <silent> <unique> <Leader>foo <Plug>RooterChangeToRootDirectory

where <Leader>foo is the mapping you want.

You can change the file extensions which trigger vim-rooter with autocommands in ~/.vim/after/plugin/vim-rooter.vim. You'll need to create this file, and possibly the directories, yourself.

To add a file extension, e.g. foo:

autocmd rooter BufEnter *.foo :Rooter

To remove a file extension, e.g. js:

autocmd! rooter BufEnter *.js

To remove all the file extensions so vim-rooter doesn't change directory automatically at all:

autocmd! rooter

Finally you can have vim-rooter locally change directory (:lcd) instead of changing directory (:cd) by adding this to your .vimrc:

let g:rooter_use_lcd = 1

Install into ~/.vim/plugin/rooter.vim or, if you're using Pathogen, into ~/.vim/bundle/rooter.vim.