Install vim's docs to /usr/share/doc/vim-6.4

[Matthew Burgess]

As per the referenced email, vim currently installs its docs in /usr/share/doc, but everything else is in a subdirectory thereof. In ​http://www.linuxfromscratch.org/pipermail/lfs-dev/2005-August/052568.html, Jeremy suggests:

sed -i 's:$(VIMRTLOC)$(HELPSUBDIR):/usr/share/doc/vim-6.3:' src/Makefile

prior to configuring and compiling, though it causes problems with the syntax file location. Further investigation needed!

[Matthew Burgess]

echo '#define SYS_VIMRC_FILE "/etc/vimrc"' >> src/feature.h ./configure --prefix=/usr --enable-multibyte make HELPSUBLOC=/usr/share/doc/vim-6.4 make HELPSUBLOC=/usr/share/doc/vim-6.4 install ln -sv vim /usr/bin/vi

appears to work for me. No errors regarding syntax highlighting, :help works as expected. Although this approach is a little more cumbersome than the `sed', it Just Works, which is obviously a pretty big advantage :-) Can a few others test these instructions out too, and verify that nothing breaks?

[alexander@…]

The instructions currently in the book install vim help files into /usr/share/doc, but at runtime, vim still looks into /usr/share/vim for its tags file.

See ​http://archives.linuxfromscratch.org/mail-archives/lfs-dev/2005-November/054104.html

[Justin R. Knierim]

I confirm what Alexander described. On a 6.1.1 LiveCD, vim works fine since when it was built, "HELPSUBLOC=/usr/share/doc/vim-6.3" wasn't specified to `make install`. When starting vim without parameters and issuing a ":help version6", the Vim Reference Manual starts fine.

When I rm -fr /usr/share/vim and then re-install vim using `make HELPSUBLOC=/usr/share/doc/vim-6.3 install`, starting vim without parameters and issuing a ":help version6" returns:

E433: No tags file E149: Sorry, no help for version6

I tested version 6.4 as well, with the same results.

The instructions for 6.1.1 are still ok, only LFS development version is effected.

[Matthew Burgess]

Confirmed here too - sorry about that, I still had /usr/share/vim lying around hence it appeared to work for me. The Vim build system is confusing me no end, it's almost as if it was designed not to be able to separate anything out from the /usr/share/vim. I'm now thinking that the symlink approach would be the most sensible way forward.

[ken@…]

Tried the following:

ln -s ../../doc/vim-6.4 /usr/share/vim/vim64/doc

This works, but I'm not entirely convinced that it is the right thing to do.

For starters, it's one more thing to forget to change when there is a version upgrade (vim-6.4 in one place, but vim64 in another, so one is going to be hardcoded in the text). I'm also uncertain if the HELPSUBLOC is really needed in the compile, or only in the install.

An alternative would be to just symlink /usr/share/doc/vim-6.4 to the vim doc

directory (same problem with vim-6.4 and vim64).

And just to be pedantic, the default install uses /usr/share/vim not

/usr/share/doc/vim.