[Question] Purpose of vimx?

[Zdenek Dohnal]

Hi all,

I found out there is Vimx symlink to gvim binary in my Vim package in Fedora.

Does anyone know what Vimx is/was? What behavior did it have?

I see from man page:

vimx Starts gvim in "Vi" mode similar to "vim", but with additional features like xterm clipboard support

but it was added into our package long time ago and there is no sign of Vimx in Vim project itself, so the man page seems out-dated.

The current behavior is when user calls 'vimx', normal 'vim' is opened because there is no 'g' at the beginning of name.

Thank you in advance!

Have a nice day,

Zdenek

[Tony Mechelynck]

Well, on my openSUSE 15.1 system there are a lot of executables whose
name start with vi (some of which I created myself) but none of them
is vimx or Vimx.

If on your system there is a symlink vimx --> gvim then it will start
the gvim executable in console mode, rather than a non-GUI-enabled Vim
even if you have one. This may be useful if there is a non-X-enabled
(and therefore non-GUI-enabled non-clipboard-enabled) Vim executable
named "vim" on your system.

The usual procedure on Unix-like systems is to compile a full-featured
GUI-enabled Vim executable named vim, and to have in the $PATH several
symlinks, one of them named "gvim", pointing to it. Fedora may have
acted otherwise in order to allow users to install, if they wish, all
three of a minimal Vim named "vi", a full-featured GUI-enabled Vim
named "gvim", and a third one with some intermediate featureset, but
no X and no GUI, under the name "vim".

On Windows it is different because there each executable program is
either a GUI or a console application but not both.

Best regards,
Tony.

[Christian Brabandt]

I believe the vimx package was a Red-Hat/Fedora specialty to provide a
minimal vi with X11 feature support (just like your manpage said). This
feature has never been included in the Vim project itself. As to why it
doesn't work as expected, you should ask the Red-Hat/Fedora developers
(read the changelog, open a bug, etc.). Perhaps it is not needed anymore
so you could get rid of it.

Best,
Christian
--
Takt ist vor allem die Kunst des Überhörens.
-- Hans Söhnker

[James McCoy]

It's certainly still needed.  The vim binary is not built with the "huge" feature set, if I recall correctly, and vimx is linked against X libraries, so you're able to access the X selections.

[Christian Brabandt]

On Di, 20 Aug 2019, James McCoy wrote:

> It's certainly still needed. The vim binary is not built with the "huge"
> feature set, if I recall correctly, and vimx is linked against X libraries,
> so you're able to access the X selections.

I guess I meant a different "need" :)

What I meant was more like: "If we are already running an X server, do
we really care to save the few (memory) kilobytes that the tiny version
saves in contrast to providing a bigger feature set of the huge
version".

Especially on todays machines where even tiny systems like the raspberry
pi have plenty of memory.

Mit freundlichen Grüßen
Christian
--
Aktivität ist nun einmal die Mutter des Erfolgs.
-- Claude Adrien Helvétius

[Zdenek Dohnal]

On Tuesday, August 20, 2019 at 3:30:17 PM UTC+2, Christian Brabandt wrote:
> I believe the vimx package was a Red-Hat/Fedora specialty to provide a
> minimal vi with X11 feature support (just like your manpage said). This
> feature has never been included in the Vim project itself. As to why it
> doesn't work as expected, you should ask the Red-Hat/Fedora developers
> (read the changelog, open a bug, etc.). Perhaps it is not needed anymore
> so you could get rid of it.
>
> Best,
> Christian
> --
> Takt ist vor allem die Kunst des Überhörens.
> -- Hans Söhnker

The problem is when the maintainer, I, is not sure what is its correct behavior, because it was added long time ago and I never used it before :( . Previous maintainer is often busy to respond and vimx comes even from times before him (before 2000...). And when I saw different explanation on the internet, I rather asked here, if there is someone who actually knows what vimx really should be.

If it is really as manpage says - Vi with X GUI (which is Vim project built with minimal features in RHEL/Fedora) - I would rather stop shipping it, because to make it work would need to compile Vim again especially for vimx and it does bring much value these days.

Everyone, thank you for the info!