8.73.1. Installation of Vim
First, change the default location of the vimrc configuration file to /etc:
echo '#define SYS_VIMRC_FILE "/etc/vimrc"' >> src/feature.h
Prepare Vim for compilation:
./configure --prefix=/usr
Compile the package:
make
To prepare the tests, ensure that user tester can write to the source tree:
chown -R tester .
Now run the tests as user tester:
su tester -c "TERM=xterm-256color LANG=en_US.UTF-8 make -j1 test" \
&> vim-test.log
The test suite outputs a lot of binary data to the screen. This can
cause issues with the settings of the current terminal (especially
while we are overriding the TERM
variable to satisfy some assumptions of the test suite). The
problem can be avoided by redirecting the output to a log file as
shown above. A successful test will result in the words
ALL DONE in the log file at
completion.
Install the package:
make install
Many users reflexively type vi instead of vim. To allow execution of
vim when users
habitually enter vi,
create a symlink for both the binary and the man page in the
provided languages:
ln -sv vim /usr/bin/vi
for L in /usr/share/man/{,*/}man1/vim.1; do
ln -sv vim.1 $(dirname $L)/vi.1
done
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-9.1.0927, making it consistent
with the location of documentation for other packages:
ln -sv ../vim/vim91/doc /usr/share/doc/vim-9.1.0927
If an X Window System is going to be installed on the LFS system,
it may be necessary to recompile Vim after installing X. Vim comes
with a GUI version of the editor that requires X and some
additional libraries to be installed. For more information on this
process, refer to the Vim documentation and the Vim installation
page in the BLFS book at
https://www.linuxfromscratch.org/blfs/view/systemd/postlfs/vim.html.
8.73.2. Configuring Vim
By default, vim runs
in vi-incompatible mode. This may be new to users who have used
other editors in the past. The “nocompatible” setting is included below to
highlight the fact that a new behavior is being used. It also
reminds those who would change to “compatible” mode that it should be the first
setting in the configuration file. This is necessary because it
changes other settings, and overrides must come after this setting.
Create a default vim
configuration file by running the following:
cat > /etc/vimrc << "EOF"
" Begin /etc/vimrc
" Ensure defaults are set before customizing settings, not after
source $VIMRUNTIME/defaults.vim
let skip_defaults_vim=1
set nocompatible
set backspace=2
set mouse=
syntax on
if (&term == "xterm") || (&term == "putty")
set background=dark
endif
" End /etc/vimrc
EOF
The set nocompatible
setting makes vim
behave in a more useful way (the default) than the vi-compatible
manner. Remove the “no” to keep the old vi behavior. The set backspace=2 setting allows
backspacing over line breaks, autoindents, and the start of an
insert. The syntax on
parameter enables vim's syntax highlighting. The set mouse= setting enables proper
pasting of text with the mouse when working in chroot or over a
remote connection. Finally, the if statement with the set background=dark setting corrects
vim's guess about the
background color of some terminal emulators. This gives the
highlighting a better color scheme for use on the black background
of these programs.
Documentation for other available options can be obtained by
running the following command:
vim -c ':options'
![[Note]](../images/note.png)
Note
By default, vim only installs spell-checking files for the
English language. To install spell-checking files for your
preferred language, copy the .spl
and optionally, the .sug files for
your language and character encoding from runtime/spell into /usr/share/vim/vim91/spell/.
To use these spell-checking files, some configuration in
/etc/vimrc is needed, e.g.:
set spelllang=en,ru
set spell
For more information, see runtime/spell/README.txt.
![[Tip]](../images/tip.png)