Several months ago I spent way too long trying to figure out how to upgrade my Vim install from the default system 7.3 install to 7.4 in order to use new plugins. Hours later I gave up.

It should have been as easy as this:

sudo port install vim

When I fired it up, I get this message about python not being installed. Well OSX comes with a default python install. Well sudo port select python python27. Nope.

Fast-forward to a few weeks ago when our team start developing outside the VM. I install MacVim with python support. It works, but it’s super slow.

I wanted my old workflow back with tmux. And in order to get that back, I need to get a usable latest vim install. I finally made some headway.

First, fetch the vim repo.

git clone https://github.com/vim/vim.git
cd src
make distclean  # if you build Vim before

Next configure it.

I’m configuring to remove gui support. Not important. I’m adding the huge feature set because why not. Don’t need NetBeans support. Enabling Python support. Finally, since I’m using Macports, I point to the Macports directory.

./configure --disable-darwin --enable-gui=no --with-features=huge \
--disable-netbeans --enable-pythoninterp \
--prefix=/opt/local --with-local-dir=/opt/local --disable-netbeans

Now, make and install

make
sudo make install

Woo!

Next step is to get tmux working. I’m thinking of splitting my tmux config to work across OSX and Linux.