How do I compile the latest gvim from source

Run the following commands in the terminal.

sudo apt-get build-dep vim-gnome

to get all the build dependencies you need. Then

sudo apt-get install mercurial

to get the Mercurial version control system needed to download the latest Vim source code. Then

hg clone https://vim.googlecode.com/hg/ vim

to download the Vim source code to the subdirectory vim of the current directory.

cd vim/src

to change to the right directory

Now let's configure Vim for compilation (with "huge" features - see http://www.drchip.org/astronaut/vim/vimfeat.html for a description of the different feature sets)

./configure --prefix=/usr/local --with-features=huge

If ./configure finished without any problems, then run

make

and then

sudo make install

and that should be it.

To update Vim to the latest version, just go into the vim directory and run

hg pull
hg update

and then re-run configure, make and make install.