How do I build a gvim executable

Question

I have successfully built vim on linux (centOS). However, the ./configure, make, make install trilogy didn't build a gvim executable. Yet, I can start the gui version with vim -g. I seem to remember that when I built vim (and gvim) in other occasions, that also the executable gvim was built. So, is there a flag that I can pass to ./configure so that the executable gvim is also built. Or am I missing something completely different?

Answer 1

If you can start the GUI with vim -g or with :gui then you already have your executable. Perhaps something went wrong during make install: gvim (in /usr/bin/ or wherever) should be a link to vim.

Also, the standard instructions for compiling vim are a little different from the usual ./configure; make; make install since vim has a make rule to run configure. From vim74/src/INSTALL:

2. Unix
=======

Summary:
1. make         run configure, compile and link
2. make install     installation in /usr/local

I remember a discussion a while ago on the vim mailing list about changing this to be more standard, but I do not think that is going to happen.

Answer 2

I use this settings to build vim

./configure \
--prefix=/path \
--enable-pythoninterp \
--enable-cscope \
--enable-fontset \
--with-x \
--with-features=huge

but it's just an example, you should always experiment with the settings to find the one that fits your case, the autocompletition feature on the bash helps with the configure script too, so it's easy to find new flags that way.