Update built-in vim on Mac OS X

Question

I know this might be more appropriate at Ask Different  but as I tried adding tags there  there was no vim tag  only macvim  So I figured I might get a better audience here   In the Terminal  I do the following    vim --version VIM - Vi IMproved 7 2  2008 Aug 9  compiled Jan 31 2010 13 33 49    When I browse to http   www vim org  I see a news item     Vim 7 3 released    How do I update my built-in vim  I would very much like to do it cleanly  i e  no duplicate installations  or any additional downloads  no macports  etc    I considered using Mercurial  as I already use it for other things   as per the instructions here     hg clone https   vim googlecode com hg  vim   cd vim src   make   But I think that would make a duplicate installation  Despite my  clean  requirement as mentioned above   unclean  solutions are also welcome  since maybe there really is no other way

User · Answer

brew install vim --override-system-vi

User · Answer

Don t overwrite the built-in Vim   Instead  install it from source in a different location or via Homebrew or MacPorts in their default location then add this line to your  bashrc or  profile   alias vim   path to your own vim    and or change your  PATH so that it looks into its location before the default location   The best thing to do  in my opinion  is to simply download the latest MacVim which comes with a very complete vim executable and use it in Terminal app like so   alias vim   Applications MacVim app Contents MacOS Vim    or something like that  YMMV

User · Answer

Like Eric  I used homebrew  but I used the default recipe  So   brew install mercurial brew install vim   And after restarting the terminal homebrew s vim should be the default  If not  you should update your  PATH so that  usr local bin is before  usr bin  E g  add the following to your  profile    export PATH  usr local bin  PATH

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If I understand things correctly  you want to install over your existing Vim  for better or worse  -  This is a bad idea and it is not the  clean  way to do it  Why  Well  OS X expects that nothing will ever change in  usr bin unbeknownst to it  so any time you overwrite stuff in there you risk breaking some intricate interdependency  And  Let s say you do break something -- there s no way to  undo  that damage  You will be sad and alone  You may have to reinstall OS X   Part 1  A better idea  The  clean  way is to install in a separate place  and make the new binary higher priority in the  PATH  Here is how I recommend doing that       Create the directories you need   sudo mkdir -p  opt local bin     Download  compile  and install the latest Vim   cd     hg clone https   bitbucket org vim-mirror vim or git clone https   github com vim vim git      cd vim     configure --prefix  opt local   make   sudo make install     Add the binary to your path  ahead of  usr bin   echo  PATH  opt local bin  PATH   gt  gt     bash profile     Reload bash profile so the changes take effect in this window   source    bash profile   Voila  Now when we use vim we will be using the new one  But  to get back to our old configuration in the event of huge f ckups  we can just delete the  opt directory     which vim  opt local bin vim   vim --version   head -n 2 VIM - Vi IMproved 7 3  2010 Aug 15  compiled Aug 27 2011 20 55 46  MacOS X  unix  version   See how clean this is   I recommend not to install in  usr local bin when you want to override binaries in  usr bin  because by default OS X puts  usr bin higher priority in  PATH than  usr local bin  and screwing with that opens its own can of worms     So  that s what you SHOULD do   Part 2  The  correct  answer  but a bad idea   Assuming you re set on doing that  you are definitely on track  To install on top of your current installation  you need to set the  prefix  directory  That s done like this   hg clone https   bitbucket org vim-mirror vim or git clone https   github com vim vim git cd vim   configure --prefix  usr make sudo make install   You can pass  configure  a few other options too  if you want  Do    configure --help  to see them  I hope you ve got a backup before you do it  though  in case something goes wrong

User · Answer

On Yosemite  install vim using brew and the override-system-vi option  This will automatically install vim with the features of the  huge  vim install   brew install vim --with-override-system-vi   The output of this command will show you where brew installed vim  In that folder  go down into  bin vim to actually run vim  This is your command to run vim from any folder    usr local Cellar vim 7 4 873 bin vim   Then alias this command by adding the following line in your  bashrc   alias vim   usr local Cellar vim 7 4 873 bin vim    EDIT  Brew flag --override-system-vi has been deprecated  Changed for --with-override-system-vi  Source  https   github com Shougo neocomplete vim issues 401

User · Answer

This blog post was helpful for me  I used the  Homebrew built Vim  solution  which in my case saved the new version in  usr local bin  At this point  the post suggested hiding the system vim  which didn t work for me  so I used an alias instead     brew install vim   alias vim   path to new vim   which vim vim  aliased to  path to new vim

User · Answer

A note to romainl s answer  aliases don t work together with sudo because only the first word is checked on aliases  To change this add another alias to your  profile    bashrc   alias sudo  sudo    With this change sudo vim will behave as expected

User · Answer

I just installed vim by   brew install vim   now the new vim is accessed by vim and the old vim  built-in vim  by vi

[macos] Update built-in vim on Mac OS X

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