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 Mercurial. 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 \
       ruby-dev mercurial

   For Fedora 20, that would be the following:

   sudo yum install -y ruby ruby-devel lua lua-devel luajit \
       luajit-devel ctags mercurial 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 dirsudo 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

3. Once everything is installed, getting the source is easy. If you're not using vim 7.4, make sure to set the VIMRUNTIMEDIR variable correctly below (for instance, with vim 7.4a, use /usr/share/vim/vim74a):

   cd ~hg clone https://code.google.com/p/vim/cd vim
   ./configure --with-features=huge \
               --enable-multibyte \
               --enable-rubyinterp \
               --enable-pythoninterp \
               --with-python-config-dir=/usr/lib/python2.7/config \
               --enable-perlinterp \
               --enable-luainterp \
               --enable-gui=gtk2 --enable-cscope --prefix=/usr
   make VIMRUNTIMEDIR=/usr/share/vim/vim74
   sudo make install

   If you want to be able to easily uninstall the package use checkinstall instead ofsudo make install

   sudo apt-get install checkinstallcd 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

   You may need to add
   --with-python-config-dir=/usr/lib/python2.7/config-x86_64-linux-gnu/ to the configure call.

   These configure and make calls assume a Debian-like distro where Vim's runtime files directory is placed in /usr/share/vim/vim74/, 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 makecall (in other words, go with the defaults).

   If you get stuck, here's some other useful information on building Vim.