Compile gvim from sources?

I had a similar problem installing gvim 7.3 onto Centos 6.2 (x86_64)

Some required devel packages were missing. To install them:

yum groupinstall "Desktop Platform Development"

[To view all available groups: yum grouplist]

Then building from source just worked

wget ftp://ftp.vim.org/pub/vim/unix/vim-7.3.tar.bz2
bunzip2 vim-7.3.tar.bz2
tar xf vim-7.3.tar
cd vim73

./configure --prefix=/home/me/vim73
make
make install

To discover what files were missing:

./configure | less

and searching for 'gui' showed that X11 related headers were missing.

In ubuntu I compile vim the following way:

sudo apt-get build-dep vim
sudo apt-get build-dep libx11-dev libxtst-dev

make distclean

./configure --with-compiledby="David Gamba <[email protected]>" \
--with-features=huge \
--enable-gui=auto \
--with-x \
--enable-rubyinterp \
--with-ruby-command=/usr/bin/ruby \
--enable-perlinterp \
--enable-pythoninterp --with-python-config-dir=/usr/lib/python2.7/config \
--enable-fontset \
--enable-cscope \
--enable-gtk2-check \
--enable-gnome-check

make

At this point, cd src and check for the correct X11 and clipboard support: ./vim --version. Then:

sudo make install

For Fedora (using the KDE desktop) I installed the following packages:

yum install gcc libX11-devel libXtst-devel ncurses-devel perl-ExtUtils-Embed ruby ruby-devel python-devel gtk2-devel libXt-devel

And changed my configure command to the following:

./configure --with-compiledby="David Gamba <[email protected]>" \
--with-features=huge \
--enable-gui=auto \
--with-x \
--enable-rubyinterp \
--with-ruby-command=/usr/bin/ruby \
--enable-perlinterp \
--enable-pythoninterp --with-python-config-dir=/usr/lib64/python2.7/config \
--enable-fontset \
--enable-cscope \
--enable-gtk2-check \
--enable-gnome-check \
--enable-fail-if-missing

After that I get the following:

gvim --version
VIM - Vi IMproved 7.4 (2013 Aug 10, compiled May  4 2014 19:43:27)
Included patches: 1-274
Compiled by David Gamba <davidgamba ...>

EDIT: Forgot to mention that for Fedora I was getting an error with the location of the xsubpp perl script so I ended up modifying the Makefile thanks to some bug report online.

--- a/src/Makefile      Fri May 02 15:46:14 2014 +0200
+++ b/src/Makefile      Sun May 04 19:56:20 2014 -0600
@@ -2465,7 +2465,7 @@

 auto/if_perl.c: if_perl.xs
        $(PERL) -e 'unless ( $$] >= 5.005 ) { for (qw(na defgv errgv)) { print "#define PL_$$_ $$_\n" }}' > $@
-       $(PERL) $(PERLLIB)/ExtUtils/xsubpp -prototypes -typemap \
+       $(PERL) /usr/bin/xsubpp -prototypes -typemap \
            $(PERLLIB)/ExtUtils/typemap if_perl.xs >> $@

  auto/osdef.h: auto/config.h osdef.sh osdef1.h.in osdef2.h.in

You can use the following command to find necessary dependencies for gvim:

sudo apt-get build-dep vim

If you haven't add source repository in your source.list file in /etc/apt/, you can open this file, duplicate the entries inside and change "dep" to "dep-src".

After all dependencies installed, you will be able to compile vim with gui.

This looks like the case of not having enough *-devel packages installed. Try installing all the devel packages. I think there is a meta-package for installing most of them. Try gnome-devel. Sorry I don't have Ubuntu nearby right now.

To compile different variants of vim (e.g. GUI and non-GUI), you have to configure/compile it multiple times.