VIM - Installation Help

Installing a program can be a difficult thing. We all need help with this sometime.

Download

The first thing you usually do is download the source archive. There are quite some hints in the Download FAQ.

If all works well then you should now have the latest source archive and runtime archive on your computer.

I suggest to place the downloaded archives (the runtime archive and the source archive) in the directory $HOME/archive/:

$ ls $HOME/archive/vim*gz
 1339333 Jan 21 20:42 vim-6.0t-rt.tar.gz
 1425374 Jan 21 20:44 vim-6.0t-src.tar.gz

Unpack

$ cd $HOME/install/
$ tar xvvzf $HOME/archive/vim-6.0t-rt.tar.gz
$ tar xvvzf $HOME/archive/vim-6.0t-src.tar.gz
$ cd src
$ ./configure with options
$ make
$ make install

Now, if you want to install vim for yourself in your own home directory then you should tell the configure script about this by specifying the installation path prefix;

$ ./configure --prefix=$HOME

Comments

The hardest part of the installation probably is the configuration of options in the "Makefile". Comments are quite good - but scrolling around, and editing can be tricky.

Many users are not allowed to install the binary under the default directory "/usr/local/", so I advise you to change at least the "prefix" in the Makefile:

### Installation directories. The defaults come from configure. ### prefix the top directory for the data (default "/usr/local") # Uncomment the next line to install Vim in your home directory. prefix = $(HOME)/solaris

Vim Installation Example - Solaris

The ftp server here is mounted on /import/ftp/ so I can unpack the archive like this:

  gtar xvvzf /import/ftp/misc/editors/vim/unreleased/unix/vim-5.5a-src.tar.gz

But this is a special case, of course. So let's assume that the archive with the sources are in ~/src. Unpacking the archive then as easy as this:

	gtar xvvzf vim-5.5a-src.tar.gz

The option "vv" in this command makes gtar display all files "very verbosely": drwxr-xr-x mool/wheel 0 1999-08-29 18:28 vim-5.5a/ -rw-r--r-- mool/wheel 425 1999-08-28 16:42 vim-5.5a/README_src.txt drwxr-xr-x mool/wheel 0 1999-08-29 18:28 vim-5.5a/src/ [...] -rw-r--r-- mool/wheel 547 1999-02-24 22:17 vim-5.5a/pixmaps/tb_shell.xpm -rw-r--r-- mool/wheel 606 1999-02-24 22:17 vim-5.5a/pixmaps/tb_split.xpm -rw-r--r-- mool/wheel 625 1999-02-24 22:17 vim-5.5a/pixmaps/tb_undo.xpm See the full log for details.

Now we can "run configure", ie enter the command "./configure":

guckes@ritz:~/src/vim-5.5a>ls -l conf* -rwx--x--x 1 guckes emailer 162 Feb 12 1998 configure guckes@ritz:~/src/vim-5.5a>./configure creating cache ./config.cache [...] Note that the file "config.cache" is created as opposed to loaded. When installing Vim for another system then this cache file has to be deleted first. (This error has cost me some time..)

The automatic configuration should end with

	updating cache ./config.cache
	creating ./config.status
	creating config.mk
	creating config.h

The configuration of some programs here end with a note on what to do next which I find quite nice. Vim's configure does not have that, though.

Back to the -> VIM Pages

URL:         http://www.math.fu-berlin.de/~guckes/vim/howto/install.html
             http://www.vim.org/install.html
Created:     Mon Feb 12 00:00:00 MET 1996

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Sven Guckes guckes@vim.org