This package requires its patch to be applied before you can install it. Make sure it's unpacked before running the installation commands. If you don't like vim to be installed as an editor on your LFS system, you may want to download an alternative and install the editor you prefer. There are a few hints on how to install different editors available at . Currently there are hints for Emacs, joe, and nano. Install Vim by running the following commands: patch -Np1 -i ../vim-&vim-version;.patch && ./configure --prefix=/usr && make CPPFLAGS=-DSYS_VIMRC_FILE=\\\"/etc/vimrc\\\" && make install && ln -sf vim /usr/bin/vi If you plan to install the X Window system on your LFS system, you might want to re-compile Vim after you have installed X. Vim comes with a nice GUI version of the editor which requires X and a few other libraries to be installed. For more information read the Vim documentation. The FHS says that editors like vim should use /var/lib/<editor> for their temporary state files, like temporary save files for example. If you wish vim to conform to the FHS, you should use this command set instead of the one presented above: patch -Np1 -i ../vim-&vim-version;.patch && ./configure --prefix=/usr --localstatedir=/var/lib/vim && make CPPFLAGS=-DSYS_VIMRC_FILE=\\\"/etc/vimrc\\\" && make install && ln -sf vim /usr/bin/vi