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It’s a nuisance that some desktop systems ship Vim without the +clipboard feature! I’d like to see that change. Can we fix this?īeing able to access the system clipboard from Vim is essential.
Homebrew run macvim install#
It’s possible to install packages on a Linux server that would add the +clipboard feature for Vim, but doing so would also install X11 and all its dependencies. Some Vim packages are intended for systems without X11, such as the vim-nox package. In this environment, it makes sense for Vim to be built with the -clipboard feature disabled. When Linux runs on a server it doesn’t usually include X11. That could be handy if your distribution ship vim with -clipboard, but also ships gvim with +clipboard. Robin Skahjem-Eriksen wrote to me with a tip: you can run GVim inside the terminal by launching it with the gvim -v command. each of these packages for Ubuntu provides Vim with +clipboard: vim-gnome, vim-athena, and vim-gtx.
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If your desktop Linux distribution ships with Vim without the +clipboard feature, you should be able to install a Vim package that provides this feature, e.g. Most systems that use X11 will ship a version of Vim with the +clipboard feature. On desktop Linux systems the clipboard is handled by the X window system. Here’s a gist from running /Applications/MacVim.app/Contents/MacOS/Vim -version. Both versions include the +clipboard feature. Look inside /Applications/MacVim.app/Contents/MacOS, and you’ll see that the app provides two binaries: MacVim, which launches the GUI, and Vim, which runs in the Terminal with the same feature set. Here’s a gist from running /usr/local/bin/vim -version.Īlternatively, you could download MacVim. If you use Homebrew, you can get Vim with +clipboard by running: brew install vim Here’s the gist from running /usr/bin/vim -version on Mavericks (and the same on Mountain Lion). On OS X Mavericks, Apple ships Vim version 7.3 with -clipboard. Let’s look at a few ways of getting the +clipboard feature on OS X and Ubuntu. Many systems ship with a version of Vim that was compiled with the -clipboard feature disabled, which is a damned nuisance! Being able to access the system clipboard from Vim is an essential feature.
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