This chapter is referenced in the LFS book for those wishing to use other editors on their LFS system. You're also shown how some LFS installed programs benefit from being recompiled after GUI libraries have been installed.
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.
Download (HTTP): http://ftp.at.vim.org/pub/vim/unix/vim-7.0.tar.bz2
Download (FTP): ftp://ftp.vim.org/pub/vim/unix/vim-7.0.tar.bz2
Download MD5 sum: 4ca69757678272f718b1041c810d82d8
Download size: 6.3 MB
Estimated disk space required: 73 MB
Estimated build time: 0.8 SBU
Recommended Patch: http://www.linuxfromscratch.org/patches/blfs/6.2.0/vim-7.0-fixes-14.patch
Recommended Patch: http://www.linuxfromscratch.org/patches/blfs/6.2.0/vim-7.0-mandir-1.patch
Translated Vim messages: http://ftp.at.vim.org/pub/vim/extra/vim-7.0-lang.tar.gz
GTK+-2.8.20 OR LessTif-0.94.4 OR GTK+-1.2.10, Python-2.4.4, Tcl-8.4.13, Ruby-1.8.5, and GPM-1.20.1
User Notes: http://wiki.linuxfromscratch.org/blfs/wiki/vim
![[Note]](../images/note.png)
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.
If desired, unpack the translated messages archive:
tar -xf ../vim-7.0-lang.tar.gz --strip-components=1
Install Vim by running the following commands:
patch -Np1 -i ../vim-7.0-fixes-14.patch && patch -Np1 -i ../vim-7.0-mandir-1.patch && 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 && make
To test the results, issue: make test. The vim test suite outputs a lot of binary data to the screen, which can cause issues with the settings of the current terminal. This can be resolved by redirecting the output to a log file. Even if one of the tests fails to produce the file test.out in src/testdir, the remaining tests will still be executed. If all goes well,the final message in the log file will be ALL DONE. 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-7.0, making it consistent with the location of documentation for other packages:
ln -snfv ../vim/vim70/doc /usr/share/doc/vim-7.0
patch …: These patches are the same as LFS and update the package with upstream patches and ensure the man pages are placed in the proper locations.
--with-features=huge: This switch enables all the additional features available in Vim.
--enable-gui=no: This will prevent compilation of the GUI. Vim will still link against X so that some nice eye-candy such as updating the title bar of an Xterm window are available.
--without-x: If you prefer not to link Vim against X, use this switch.
--enable-perlinterp, --enable-pythoninterp, --enable-tclinterp, --enable-rubyinterp: These options include the Perl, Python, Tcl, or Ruby interpreters that allow using other application code in vim scripts.
Vim-7.0 introduced an integrated spell checker that doesn't requires additional libraries to be installed. To enable the spell checker you can set the following in one of the configuration files:
set spell spelllang=en,ru
By default, Vim only installs spell files for the English language. If a spell file is not available for your language, then Vim will call $VIMRUNTIME/plugin/spellfile.vim and will try to obtain the *.spl and optionally *.sug from the vim ftp server, using the $VIMRUNTIME/plugin/netrw 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/vim70/spell/.
For more information about the spell checker and some other features in Vim-7.0 (such us vimgrep, tab-pages, and omni-completion), issue the following command inside Vim:
:help version7
For additional information on setting up Vim configuration files, see The vimrc Files and http://www.vi-improved.org/vimrc.php.
A list of the reinstalled files, along with their short descriptions can be found in the LFS Vim Installation Instrutions
Last updated on 2007-02-11 21:03:11 -0600