Assistance Needed for Upgrading Vim 7.4 to the Latest Version

[Srivatsan Ramesh]

Hello Vim Support Team,

We are currently using Vim version 7.4 on our RHEL6 systems and would like to upgrade to the latest available version. Could you please provide us with detailed instructions on how to perform this upgrade?

Specifically, we would like guidance on the following:

Pre-requisites: Are there any specific pre-requisites or dependencies that need to be installed before upgrading?

Backup: What are the recommended steps to backup our current settings and configurations before performing the upgrade?

Upgrade Process: A step-by-step guide on how to upgrade from Vim 7.4 to the latest version, including any necessary commands or scripts.

Post-Upgrade Configuration: Any additional configurations or settings adjustments that may be needed after the upgrade to ensure everything functions correctly.

Your assistance in this matter would be greatly appreciated, we want to ensure a smooth transition to the latest version.

Thank you for your time and support.

Regards,

Srivatsan R

[Christian Brabandt]

On Di, 16 Jul 2024, Srivatsan Ramesh wrote:

> Hello Vim Support Team,

We are not a professional support team here. We help people seeking
advise, but there will be no guaranteed working solution for your use
case (or even a guaranteed answer).

I don't think we can give you detailed answers to those very specific
questions on your environment. But I will give you some general advises:

I would suggest you migrate to a newer operating system, since RHEL6 is
EOL. Chances are good, it comes with a newer version of Vim.

If you want to migrate to the lastest version, I'd recommend to compile
your own version, since the latest version changes every day by a few
minor release numbers. At the time of writing we are at 9.1.0593 but I
am sure tomorrow by this time we may be closer to the 9.1.600 release.

You shouldn't need to worry about incompatible changes, chances are that
your configuration files will still work, although it is a big step from
7.4 to 9.1

If you want to see what changed since version 7.4, I recommend to read
the following help sections from an updated Vim:

:h version-8
:h version-8.1
:h version-8.2
:h version-9.0
:h version-9.1

There are a log of new features along with very many bug fixes and
security updates as well as many runtime file updates.

You can also try out the latest version using the appimage we provide,
see https://github.com/vim/vim-appimage/releases
Those are basically self-contained Vim executables that should run on
any recent system. However in your case, I fear that those won't run on
such an old system (because the underlying base system is just too old).

If you run into specific problems, please let us know and we may be help
a bit better.

Thanks,
Christian
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