6.13. Installing Vim-6.1

Estimated build time:           2 minutes
Estimated required disk space:  15 MB

6.13.1. Installation of Vim

If you don't like vim to be installed as an editor on the LFS system, you may want to download an alternative and install an editor you prefer. There are a few hints how to install different editors available at http://hints.linuxfromscratch.org/hints/. The hints which are currently available are for Emacs, Joe and nano.

Install Vim by running the following commands:

./configure --prefix=/usr &&
make CPPFLAGS=-DSYS_VIMRC_FILE=\\\"/etc/vimrc\\\" &&
make install &&
cd /usr/bin &&
ln -sf vim vi

If you plan on installing the X Window system on your LFS system, you might want to re-compile Vim after you have installed X. Vim comes with a nice GUI version of the editor which requires X and a few other libraries to be installed. For more information read the Vim documentation.

6.13.2. FHS compliance notes

The FHS says that editors like vim should use /var/lib/<editor> for their temporary state files, like temporary save files for example. If you wish vim to conform to the FHS, you should use this command set instead of the one presented above:

./configure --prefix=/usr --localstatedir=/var/lib/vim &&
make CPPFLAGS=-DSYS_VIMRC_FILE=\\\"/etc/vimrc\\\" &&
make install &&
cd /usr/bin &&
ln -sf vim vi

6.13.3. Command explanations

make CPPFLAGS=-DSYS_VIMRC_FILE=\\\"/etc/vimrc\\\": Setting this will cause vim to look for the /etc/vimrc file that contains the global vim settings. Normally this file is looked for in /usr/share/vim, but /etc is a more logical place for this kind of file.

6.13.4. Contents

6.13.5. Dependencies

Vim-6.0 needs the following to be installed:


bash: sh
binutils: as, ld, strip
diffutils: cmp, diff
fileutils: chmod, cp, ln, mkdir, mv, rm, touch
find: find
gcc: cc1, collect2, cpp0, gcc
grep: egrep, grep
make: make
net-tools: hostname
sed: sed
sh-utils: echo, expr, uname, whoami
textutils: cat, tr, wc