Vim comes preloaded with some good defaults. You can use the set errorformat command in (for instance) your vimrc file to add more for tools you use. If you use the += operator for the assignment, it will append the text to the current value, separated with a comma, as required for the errorformat. If some builtin format bugs you, you could be tempted to copy the default errorformat and remove the annoying format (good luck to escape all the must-be-escaped characters). Or you could use the -= operator, e.g. set errorformat-=%f:%l:%m