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SECTION 35 - BUILDING VIM FROM SOURCE


35.1. How do I build Vim from the sources on a Unix system?

For a Unix system, follow these steps to build Vim from the sources:

- Download the source and run-time filles archive (vim-##.tar.bz2) from the
  ftp://ftp.vim.org/pub/vim/unix directory.
- Extract the archive using the bzip2  and tar utilities using the command:

        $ bunzip2 -c <filename> | tar -xf -

- Run the 'make' command to configure  and build Vim with the default
  configuration.
- Run 'make install' command to installl Vim in the default directory.

To enable/disable various Vim features, before running the 'make' command
you can run the 'configure' command with different flags to include/exclude
the various Vim features. To list all the available options for the
'configure' command, use:

    $ configure -help

For more information, read

    :help install


35.2. How do I install Vim in my home directory or a directory other
      than the default installation directory in Unix?

To install Vim in a directory other than the default installation
directory, you have to specify the directory using the --prefix option
while running the configure script.

    $ ./configure --prefix=/users/xyz

You can enable/disable various Vim feature by supplying different arguments
to the configure script. For more information about all these options, run

    $ ./configure --help

For more information, read

    :help install-home
    :help install