Introduction to Vim
The Vim package, which is an
abbreviation for VI IMproved, contains a vi clone with extra features as
compared to the original vi.
The default LFS instructions install vim as a part of the base system. If you would
prefer to link vim against
X, you should recompile
vim to enable GUI mode. There is
no need for special instructions since X support is automatically detected.
![[Note]](../images/note.png)
Note
Development versions of BLFS may not build or run some packages
properly if LFS or dependencies have been updated since the most
recent stable versions of the books.
Package Information
Vim Dependencies
Recommended
a graphical
environment and GTK+-3.24.43
Optional
GPM-1.20.7, Lua-5.4.7, Ruby-3.3.6, and rsync-3.3.0
Installation of Vim
Note
If you recompile Vim to link
against X and your X libraries are not on the root partition,
you will no longer have an editor for use in emergencies. You may
choose to install an additional editor, not link Vim against X, or move the current vim executable to the
/bin directory under a different
name such as vi.
Install Vim by running the
following commands:
Note
If you intend to run the tests and have not installed Xorg in
/usr, append LDFLAGS='-L$XORG_PREFIX/lib' to the configure line
below.
echo '#define SYS_VIMRC_FILE "/etc/vimrc"' >> src/feature.h &&
echo '#define SYS_GVIMRC_FILE "/etc/gvimrc"' >> src/feature.h &&
./configure --prefix=/usr \
--with-features=huge \
--enable-gui=gtk3 \
--with-tlib=ncursesw &&
make
Note
If the global configuration file /etc/vimrc references the VIMRUNTIME environment variable, some tests may
complain about being unable to find the corresponding directory
and wait for user input. If this is the case, this file should be
saved and removed before running the tests. Or if bubblewrap-0.11.0 is installed, it's also
possible to create a lightweight container environment where this
file is hidden and run the tests in the container.
To test the results, issue: make -j1
test Test failures, if any, will produce the file
test.log in src/testdir. The remaining tests will still be
executed. If all goes well, the log will report ALL DONE. Some tests labelled as “flaky” may fail
occasionally and can be ignored. The tests are known to fail if the
output is redirected to a file, and also if they are run in a
'screen' session.
Note
If running the tests with bubblewrap-0.11.0 and /etc/vimrc hidden, use bwrap --dev-bind / / --dev-bind /dev/null
/etc/vimrc make -j1 test.
Note
Some color tests expect to be executed under the xterm terminal emulator.
Now, as the root user:
make install
By default, Vim's documentation is installed in /usr/share/vim. The following symlink allows the
documentation to be accessed via /usr/share/doc/vim-9.1.0866, making it consistent
with the location of documentation for other packages:
ln -snfv ../vim/vim91/doc /usr/share/doc/vim-9.1.0866
If you wish to update
the runtime files, issue the following command (requires rsync-3.3.0) to download it:
rsync -avzcP --exclude="/dos/" --exclude="/spell/" \
ftp.nluug.nl::Vim/runtime/ ./runtime/
And then install the updated runtime files and regenerate the
tags file, as the root user issue:
make -C src installruntime &&
vim -c ":helptags /usr/share/doc/vim-9.1.0866" -c ":q"
Command Explanations
--with-features=huge: This
switch enables all the additional features available in
Vim, including support for
multibyte characters.
--with-tlib=ncursesw: This
switch forces Vim to link against the libncursesw library.
--enable-gui=no: This will prevent
compilation of the GUI. Vim will
still link against X, so that some
features such as the client-server model or the x11-selection
(clipboard) are still available.
--without-x: If you prefer not to link
Vim against X, use this switch.
--enable-luainterp, --enable-perlinterp, --enable-python3interp=dynamic, --enable-tclinterp --with-tclsh=tclsh, --enable-rubyinterp: These options include the Lua,
Perl, Python3, Tcl, or Ruby interpreters that allow using other
application code in vim scripts.
All the --enable-* options can accept
=dynamic to dynamically load the
interpreter when needed. This is required for Python 3 to prevent segmentation faults. For
tcl, it is necessary to indicate
the name of the tclsh
executable, since configure only searches versioned
names with old versions.
Configuring Vim
Config Files
/etc/vimrc and ~/.vimrc
Configuration Information
Vim has an integrated spell
checker which you can enable by issuing the following in a vim
window:
:setlocal spell spelllang=ru
This setting will enable spell checking for the Russian language
for the current session.
By default, Vim only installs
spell files for the English language. If a spell file is not
available for a language, then Vim will call the $VIMRUNTIME/plugin/spellfile.vim plugin and
will try to obtain the *.spl and optionally *.sug from the vim
ftp server, by using the $VIMRUNTIME/plugin/netrwPlugin.vim plugin.
Alternatively you can manually download the *.spl and *.sug files
from: ftp://ftp.vim.org/pub/vim/runtime/spell/
and save them to ~/.vim/spell or in
/usr/share/vim/vim91/spell/.
To find out what's new in Vim-9.1.0866 issue the following command:
:help version-9.1.0866
For additional information on setting up Vim configuration files, see The
vimrc Files and https://vim.fandom.com/wiki/Example_vimrc.
Contents
A list of the reinstalled files, along with their short
descriptions can be found in the LFS
Vim Installation Instructions.
Installed Programs:
gview, gvim, gvimdiff, gvimtutor, rgview,
and rgvim
Installed Libraries:
None
Installed Directory:
/usr/share/vim
Short Descriptions
|
gview
|
starts gvim
in read-only mode
|
|
gvim
|
is the editor that runs under X and includes a GUI
|
|
gvimdiff
|
edits two or three versions of a file with gvim and shows the
differences
|
|
gvimtutor
|
teaches the basic keys and commands of gvim
|
|
rgview
|
is a restricted version of gview
|
|
rgvim
|
is a restricted version of gvim
|