Building Vim from source

Compiling Vim from source is actually not that difficult. Here's what you should do:

1. First, install all the prerequisite libraries, including Git. For a Debian-like Linux distribution like Ubuntu, that would be the following:

   sudo apt-get install libncurses5-dev libgnome2-dev libgnomeui-dev \
       libgtk2.0-dev libatk1.0-dev libbonoboui2-dev \
       libcairo2-dev libx11-dev libxpm-dev libxt-dev python-dev \
       python3-dev ruby-dev lua5.1 lua5.1-dev libperl-dev git

   (If you know what languages you'll be using, feel free to leave out packages you won't need, e.g. Python2 python-dev or Ruby ruby-dev. This principle heavily applies to the whole page.)

   For Fedora 20, that would be the following:

   sudo yum install -y ruby ruby-devel lua lua-devel luajit \
       luajit-devel ctags git python python-devel \
       python3 python3-devel tcl-devel \
       perl perl-devel perl-ExtUtils-ParseXS \
       perl-ExtUtils-XSpp perl-ExtUtils-CBuilder \
       perl-ExtUtils-Embed

   This step is needed to rectify an issue with how Fedora 20 installs XSubPP:

   # symlink xsubpp (perl) from /usr/bin to the perl dir
   sudo ln -s /usr/bin/xsubpp /usr/share/perl5/ExtUtils/xsubpp 

2. Remove vim if you have it already.

   sudo apt-get remove vim vim-runtime gvim

   On Ubuntu 12.04.2 you probably have to remove these packages as well:

   sudo apt-get remove vim-tiny vim-common vim-gui-common vim-nox

3. Once everything is installed, getting the source is easy.

   Note: If you are using Python, your config directory might have a machine-specific name (e.g. config-3.5m-x86_64-linux-gnu). Check in /usr/lib/python[2/3/3.5] to find yours, and change the python-config-dir and/or python3-config-dir arguments accordingly.

   Also, if you're not using vim 8.0, make sure to set the VIMRUNTIMEDIR variable correctly below (for instance, with vim 8.0a, use /usr/share/vim/vim80a). Keep in mind that some vim installations are located directly inside /usr/share/vim; adjust to fit your system:

   cd ~
   git clone https://github.com/vim/vim.git
   cd vim
   ./configure --with-features=huge \
               --enable-multibyte \
               --enable-rubyinterp \
               --enable-pythoninterp \
               --with-python-config-dir=/usr/lib/python2.7/config \
               --enable-python3interp \
               --with-python3-config-dir=/usr/lib/python3.5/config \
               --enable-perlinterp \
               --enable-luainterp \
               --enable-gui=gtk2 --enable-cscope --prefix=/usr
   make VIMRUNTIMEDIR=/usr/share/vim/vim80
   sudo make install

   Add/remove the flags above to fit your setup. For example, you can leave out enable-luainterp if you don't plan on writing any Lua.

   If you want to be able to easily uninstall the package use checkinstall instead of sudo make install (recommended)

   sudo apt-get install checkinstall
   cd vim
   sudo checkinstall

   Set vim as your default editor with update-alternatives.

   sudo update-alternatives --install /usr/bin/editor editor /usr/bin/vim 1
   sudo update-alternatives --set editor /usr/bin/vim
   sudo update-alternatives --install /usr/bin/vi vi /usr/bin/vim 1
   sudo update-alternatives --set vi /usr/bin/vim

4. Double check that you are in fact running the new Vim binary by looking at the output of vim --version.

   If you don't get gvim working (on ubuntu 12.04.1 LTS), try changing --enable-gui=gtk2 to --enable-gui=gnome2

   If you have problems, double check that you configured using the correct Python config directory, as noted at the beginning of Step 3.

   These configure and make calls assume a Debian-like distro where Vim's runtime files directory is placed in /usr/share/vim/vim80/, which is not Vim's default. Same thing goes for --prefix=/usr in the configure call. Those values may need to be different with a Linux distro that is not based on Debian. In such a case, try to remove the --prefix variable in the configure call and the VIMRUNTIMEDIR in the make call (in other words, go with the defaults).

   If you get stuck, here's some [other useful information on building Vim] (http://vim.wikia.com/wiki/Building_Vim).