How can I make the Sign Column show up all the time even if no Signs have been added to it?

Starting with Vim 7.4.2201, you can do:

:set signcolumn=yes

Cp. :help 'signcolumn'. For older Vim versions, you have to define a dummy sign and place it into the current buffer:

:sign define dummy
:execute 'sign place 9999 line=1 name=dummy buffer=' . bufnr('')

For vim-gitgutter specifically, you can also set the following variable in your ~/.vimrc:

let g:gitgutter_sign_column_always = 1

UPDATE

The plugin will now issue a warning to remove the above line and instead use:

set signcolumn="yes"

While the little dance defining a sign and placing it works ok, a more elegant alternative that works well for me is:

autocmd BufRead,BufNewFile * setlocal signcolumn=yes

And if there are certain filetypes that are not supposed to have the column:

autocmd FileType tagbar,nerdtree setlocal signcolumn=no

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