Where can I find Vim 7.3?

Question

Vim 7.3 is out, but not available in the sources. Where can I get an installation package for the 7.3 version? I don't want to install it manually.

Solution 1

I couldn't find any official packages either, so I created a PPA. Feel free to use it:

https://launchpad.net/~passy/+archive/vim

apt-add-repository ppa:passy/vim
apt-get update
apt-get upgrade

Reference: How to use PPAs

Solution 2

I built vim from sources using this sequence of commands:

sudo apt-get build-dep vim-gnome
sudo apt-get install libssl-dev
mkdir -p ~/src
hg clone https://vim.googlecode.com/hg/ ~/src/vim
cd ~/src/vim
./configure --enable-multibyte --enable-pythoninterp --enable-cscope --enable-xim --with-features=big \
            --with-python-config-dir=/usr/lib/python2.7/config-$(dpkg-architecture -qDEB_HOST_MULTIARCH)
make

and I run it without installing by using this wrapper script ~/bin/vim:

#!/bin/sh
vimhome=$HOME/src/vim
if test -x $vimhome/src/vim; then
    VIMRUNTIME=$vimhome/runtime $vimhome/src/vim "$@"
else
    /usr/bin/vim "$@"
fi

But I did that only because I couldn't find a PPA back then.

Solution 3

Vimwiki now has some instructions for building and installing vim from source, for anyone else who finds this:

Here's the relevant text:

Building GUI Vim on Ubuntu

You need the required development packages on Ubuntu to build the GUI:

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

Commands to build and install GUI Vim:

cd vim7
cd src
make distclean
./configure --with-features=huge --enable-gui=gnome2
make
sudo make install

Solution 4

Passy's PPA didn't work for me so I've installed vim packages from natty. The only thing you need besides the vim packages from natty are ruby1.8 and libruby1.8 debs.

Probably not the most genius of solutions, but it worked well for me.

Solution 5

The ppa worked for me, but I had to change my .vimrc:

" Stops vim from complaining about split lines using \
set nocp

" Fixes backspace not working to dedent a line
set backspace=indent,eol,start

View more solutions

Comments

[1passenger]

Why can't I find your package when I search for "vim" on launchpad.net?

[passy]

I don't know. Their search is not very accurate.

[Marius Gedminas]

Do you plan to keep it updated on occasion? Upstream is at version 7.3.028 now.

[Marius Gedminas]

/usr/local/bin is already in Ubuntu's default path, and it appears before /usr/bin. I strongly discourage you from making that symlink in step D and cluttering /usr/bin with things not installed using apt/dpkg.

[1passenger]

Nice solution, but I prefer the ppa way. :)

[passy]

Oh, I didn't notice. I'll try to keep it up to date.

[intuited]

Is this built with the same options used by the current vim package?

[passy]

Yes, it is. I did not change anything but the upstream package for building it.

[Hamish Downer]

Any chance of doing a build for lucid/10.04? Ideally having vim-gnome and vim-nox would be good.

[Marius Gedminas]

Hm, the vim version in that PPA is now pretty ancient...

[Flimm]

The PPA itself is pretty ancient as it doesn't support newer Ubuntu releases. Downvoted.

[passy]

@Flimm: You're right, an update was long overdue. I just pushed a new release to the PPA. If it compiles, it should be available in a few hours. launchpad.net/~passy/+archive/vim

[Marius Gedminas]

Updated the answer to work on Ubuntu 13.04 and newer, where you need to specify the Python config dir explicitly due to multiarch changes.