11.11 Sources and Supported Operating Systems

vim has its own Internet domain. The best thing to do is start from the home page at http://www.vim.org/. There is a FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions) for vim, at http://www.vim.org/faq/. Of particular interest are several vim-related mailing lists; start with http://www.vim.org/mail.html.

Instead of just one or two distribution points, there are a number of ftp sites that mirror the main vim distribution site. These are all available as ftp.country.vim.org. Replace country with a two-letter code from Table 11.18. More details, including other mirror sites, are available via links on the web page, and in the file ftp://ftp.nl.vim.org/pub/vim/MIRRORS. The other sites are all mirrors of ftp.nl.vim.org. When retrieving files via ftp, try to use the one that is closest to you.

The source code for vim is freely distributable. Distribution is permitted in source and binary form, but if you modify vim and distribute it, you must make your changes available to the maintainer for possible inclusion in a subsequent release. vim is also "charityware." This was discussed earlier in this chapter.

vim has been ported to the following systems:

• The Amiga. (This is where vim was born.)

• The Acorn Archimedes. The last working port was done with Version 2.0. A new port is being done. It will be included in Version 5.2.

• BeOS. As of vim Version 5.1, both Intel and non-Intel CPUs are supported.

• MS-DOS.

• The Apple Macintosh. The original port to the Macintosh was for Version 3.0. The 5.x port is still marked as being in an Alpha state.

• MiNT on Atari microcomputers.

• OS/2.

• UNIX. Essentially any UNIX variant should work; vim uses GNU Autoconf for configuration.

• VMS.

• Windows 95 and Windows NT. Both console and GUI versions are available. Under Windows 3.1, use the 32-bit DOS version.

The online help documents the peculiarities of the vim port to each operating system.

Compiling vim is straightforward. Retrieve the distribution via ftp. Uncompress and untar it, run the configure program, and then run make:

$ gzip -d < vim-5.1.tar.gz | tar -xvpf -
...
$ cd vim-5.1; ./configure
...
$ make
...

vim should configure and build with no problems. Use make install to install it.

Should you need to report a bug or problem in vim, the person to contact is Bram Moolenaar, at Bram@vim.org.