Compiling Vim on Ubuntu

[David Fishburn]

I am having a hard time getting gvim to compile on Ubuntu 16.04

When I run this:

./configure --enable-gui

checking for X... (cached) no

checking if X11 header files can be found... yes

checking --enable-gui argument... no GUI support

checking for X11/SM/SMlib.h... (cached) no

This is a standard install of Ubuntu (in a VM), running the dfeault GUI comes with Ubuntu (Unity).

I have tried just about everything I can think to get the required support.

sudo apt-get update

sudo apt-get build-dep vim

sudo apt-get build-dep vim-gtk

sudo apt-get install git

sudo apt-get install build-essentials

sudo apt-get install vim-gnome

sudo apt-get install libncursesw5-dev

sudo apt-get update

 

/var/tmp/user0/vim8_from_git/vim8# ./configure --enable-gui | grep gui

checking --enable-gui argument... no GUI support

 

/var/tmp/user0/vim8_from_git/vim8# apt build-dep vim

Reading package lists... Done

E: You must put some 'source' URIs in your sources.list

 

sudo apt-get update

If this does not fix the issue, edit /etc/apt/sources.list, e.g. using

sudo vim /etc/apt/sources.list

and ensure that the deb-src lines are not commented out.

sudo apt upgrade

sudo apt -get build-dep vim

sudo apt -get build-dep vim-gtk

I can't really think what else to try to install to get the GUI support.

Thanks,

David

[Christian Brabandt]

Your sources.list file is missing links to the source packages. So it
does not know how to install source packages needed for compiling.

Have a look here at an example here:
https://wiki.ubuntuusers.de/sources.list/#Ubuntu-16-04

and uncomment the `#deb-src` lines.

Once you have modified your sources.list, after an apt-get update you
should be able to run `apt-get build-dep vim-gtk` successfully.

Best,
Christian
--
Wußten Sie schon...
... daß der Hintern zu sehen bleibt, wenn man den Kopf in den Sand steckt?

[David Fishburn]

Thanks for the response Christian.

> and uncomment the `#deb-src` lines.

Here is the updated sources.

# See http://help.ubuntu.com/community/UpgradeNotes for how to upgrade to

# newer versions of the distribution.

deb http://ca.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ xenial main restricted

deb-src http://ca.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ xenial main restricted

## Major bug fix updates produced after the final release of the

## distribution.

deb http://ca.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ xenial-updates main restricted

deb-src http://ca.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ xenial-updates main restricted

## N.B. software from this repository is ENTIRELY UNSUPPORTED by the Ubuntu

## team, and may not be under a free licence. Please satisfy yourself as to

## your rights to use the software. Also, please note that software in

## universe WILL NOT receive any review or updates from the Ubuntu security

## team.

deb http://ca.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ xenial universe

deb-src http://ca.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ xenial universe

deb http://ca.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ xenial-updates universe

deb-src http://ca.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ xenial-updates universe

## N.B. software from this repository is ENTIRELY UNSUPPORTED by the Ubuntu 

## team, and may not be under a free licence. Please satisfy yourself as to 

## your rights to use the software. Also, please note that software in 

## multiverse WILL NOT receive any review or updates from the Ubuntu

## security team.

deb http://ca.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ xenial multiverse

deb-src http://ca.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ xenial multiverse

deb http://ca.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ xenial-updates multiverse

deb-src http://ca.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ xenial-updates multiverse

## N.B. software from this repository may not have been tested as

## extensively as that contained in the main release, although it includes

## newer versions of some applications which may provide useful features.

## Also, please note that software in backports WILL NOT receive any review

## or updates from the Ubuntu security team.

deb http://ca.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ xenial-backports main restricted unive$

deb-src http://ca.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ xenial-backports main restricted u$

Then the update

root@DF-CFLOCAL:/var/tmp/user0/vim8_from_git/vim8# apt-get update

Get:1 http://security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu xenial-security InRelease [107 kB]

Hit:2 http://ca.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu xenial InRelease                

Hit:3 http://ppa.launchpad.net/webupd8team/java/ubuntu xenial InRelease        

Get:4 http://ca.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu xenial-updates InRelease [109 kB]    

Get:5 http://ca.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu xenial-backports InRelease [107 kB]  

Hit:6 https://download.docker.com/linux/ubuntu xenial InRelease

Get:7 http://ca.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu xenial-updates/main amd64 Packages [871 kB]

Hit:8 https://packages.cloudfoundry.org/debian stable InRelease

Get:9 http://ca.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu xenial-updates/main i386 Packages [777 kB]

Get:10 http://ca.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu xenial-updates/universe amd64 Packages [701 kB]

Get:11 http://ca.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu xenial-updates/universe i386 Packages [643 kB]

Fetched 3,315 kB in 6s (510 kB/s)                                              

Reading package lists... Done

build-dep

root@DF-CFLOCAL:/var/tmp/user0/vim8_from_git/vim8# apt build-dep vim-gtk

Reading package lists... Done

Picking 'vim' as source package instead of 'vim-gtk'

Reading package lists... Done

Building dependency tree       

Reading state information... Done

The following packages were automatically installed and are no longer required:

  gnome-software-common libdbusmenu-gtk4 libgtkspell3-3-0 libllvm3.8

  libmircommon5 libpango1.0-0 libpangox-1.0-0 libqmi-glib1 libqpdf17

  ubuntu-core-launcher

Use 'sudo apt autoremove' to remove them.

0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded.

Check for gui support

root@DF-CFLOCAL:/var/tmp/user0/vim8_from_git/vim8# ./configure --enable-gui | grep gui

checking --enable-gui argument... no GUI support

src/auto/config.log

...

configure:9017: checking --enable-gui argument

configure:9078: result: no GUI support

configure:10504: checking for X11/SM/SMlib.h

configure:10504: result: no

...

Anything else to check?

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[Ken Takata]

Hi David,

How about using "./configure --enable-gui=gtk2" instead?

Regards,
Ken Takata

[Tony Mechelynck]

On Tue, Nov 6, 2018 at 3:18 PM Ken Takata <ktakat...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Hi David,
>
> 2018/11/6 Tue 10:30:56 UTC+9 David Fishburn wrote:
> > I am having a hard time getting gvim to compile on Ubuntu 16.04
> >

> >root

And if that isn't enough, check which GTK packages are installed — you
might be missing some "development" package: gtk2-dev or gtk2-devel or
whatever.

Best regards,
Tony.

[Dominique Pellé]

On Tue, Nov 6, 2018 at 2:30 AM David Fishburn <dfishb...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> I am having a hard time getting gvim to compile on Ubuntu 16.04

...snip...

> I can't really think what else to try to install to get the GUI support.

Try this:

# First install package needed to build vim
$ sudo apt-get build-dep vim-gnome

# Then build your own vim from sources
$ cd vim
$ rm src/auto/config.cache
$ ./configure --with-features=huge --enable-gui=gtk2
$ make - j8
$ make test
$ sudo make install

or configure with gtk3 with:
$ ./configure --with-features=huge --enable-gui=gtk3

Regards
Dominique

[John Little]

On Tuesday, November 6, 2018 at 2:30:56 PM UTC+13, David Fishburn wrote:

> I can't really think what else to try to install to get the GUI support.

In all that you didn't do

sudo apt-get build-dep vim-gnome

I booted into a xenial iso just now. This gives a vanilla, out-of-the-box xenial experience (almost), if a little slow. My old, trusty, "apt-get build-dep vim-gtk" gave errors. I used the settings app to enable all the boxes, let it update, followed Dominique's instructions and built vim with gtk2.

If the build-dep vim-gnome doesn't do the trick, maybe your sources.list has problems. The vanilla xenial's sources.list was, with comments stripped:

deb http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ xenial main restricted universe multiverse
deb-src http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ xenial main restricted universe multiverse
deb http://security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ xenial-security main restricted universe multiverse
deb-src http://security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ xenial-security main restricted universe multiverse
deb http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ xenial-updates main restricted universe multiverse
deb-src http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ xenial-updates main restricted universe multiverse

HTH, and regards, John Little

[David Fishburn]

Thank you gentlemen, I have a working GUI Vim now on Ubuntu.

One last problem.

gvim 

:ver

VIM - Vi IMproved 7.4 (2013 Aug 10, compiled Nov 24 2016 16:44:48)

Included patches: 1-1689

Extra patches: 8.0.0056

Modified by pkg-vim-m...@lists.alioth.debian.org

Compiled by pkg-vim-m...@lists.alioth.debian.org

Huge version with GTK2-GNOME GUI.  Features included (+) or not (-):

cd /vim8/src

./vim -g

:ver

VIM - Vi IMproved 8.1 (2018 May 18, compiled Nov  7 2018 10:51:26)

Included patches: 1-511

Compiled by me

Huge version with GTK2 GUI.  Features included (+) or not (-):

I would have thought running the make install should have fixed that up.

$ ls -la /usr/bin/gvim

lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 22 Nov  5 19:02 /usr/bin/gvim -> /etc/alternatives/gvim*

I had to (I did a --prefix=/usr):

unlink /usr/bin/gvim

make install

Then it setup my gvim:

$ ls -la /usr/bin/gvim

lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 3 Nov  7 12:48 /usr/bin/gvim -> vim*

David

[Dominique Pellé]

David Fishburn wrote:

> Thank you gentlemen, I have a working GUI Vim now on Ubuntu.
>
> One last problem.
>
> gvim
> :ver
> VIM - Vi IMproved 7.4 (2013 Aug 10, compiled Nov 24 2016 16:44:48)
> Included patches: 1-1689
> Extra patches: 8.0.0056
> Modified by pkg-vim-m...@lists.alioth.debian.org
> Compiled by pkg-vim-m...@lists.alioth.debian.org
> Huge version with GTK2-GNOME GUI. Features included (+) or not (-):
>
>
> cd /vim8/src
> ./vim -g
> :ver
> VIM - Vi IMproved 8.1 (2018 May 18, compiled Nov 7 2018 10:51:26)
> Included patches: 1-511
> Compiled by me
> Huge version with GTK2 GUI. Features included (+) or not (-):
>
> I would have thought running the make install should have fixed that up.
>
> $ ls -la /usr/bin/gvim
> lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 22 Nov 5 19:02 /usr/bin/gvim -> /etc/alternatives/gvim*
>
> I had to (I did a --prefix=/usr):
> unlink /usr/bin/gvim
> make install

That's a bad idea. You should never put your own
things in /usr/bin since it's meant to be managed by
apt packages. You can mess up your Ubuntu packages
when doing that. Instead, things that you build yourself
should go in /usr/local/bin which is the default location
if you follow the steps I described in my previous message.
You'll need to make sure that /usr/local/bin is in your path
before /usr/bin which I think is normally the case by
default on Ubuntu.

> Then it setup my gvim:
> $ ls -la /usr/bin/gvim
> lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 3 Nov 7 12:48 /usr/bin/gvim -> vim*

As an experiment, I deleted my /usr/local/bin than rebuilt
the gtk3 vim gui and installed it. I could see a symlink as
expected:

$ ls -l /usr/local/bin/gvim
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 3 nov 7 21:25 /usr/local/bin/gvim -> vim

This is what I did:

$ ./configure --with-features=huge --enable-gui=gtk3
--enable-python3interp --enable-pythoninterp=yes
$ make -j8
$ sudo make install

I don't know why the symlink is not created for you, but
it's best if you try to installed it in /usr/local/bin in any case.

Regards
Dominique

[John Little]

On Thursday, November 8, 2018 at 9:38:37 AM UTC+13, Dominique Pelle wrote:
> You'll need to make sure that /usr/local/bin is in your path
> before /usr/bin which I think is normally the case by
> default on Ubuntu.

I just checked on an uncustomized instance of 16.04, and indeed /usr/local/bin was in the path and ahead of /usr/bin. If the path is not the problem, conceivably David used a terminal session that was started before the make install was run, and the shell had hashed the location of gvim, so didn't search the path to find the new gvim. In bash "hash -r" fixes this.

Regards, John Little

[David Fishburn]

>> I did a --prefix=/usr

> That's a bad idea. You should never put your own
> things in /usr/bin since it's meant to be managed by
> apt packages. You can mess up your Ubuntu packages
> when doing that.  

Point taken.

On my next VM I will leave the prefix and see why I may have changed it so long ago.

Dave