A short post showing how to install vim for local user. For my own record

Why do I need to install vim for local user?

Sometimes I ssh to other servers to develop code. The server is shared with many other people. If you update the vim using sudo, other people’s .vimrc may encounter problems. So we install our own version, and keep the environment clean.

Steps

Basically I follow this website: Is it possible to install vim for a user? - StackOverflow.

• Download vim. Currently the version is 8.1 (the machine version is 7.2).

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git clone https://github.com/vim/vim.git
cd vim/src

• Change the “prefix” in src/MakeFile to $HOME/.local.
• Install ncurses-devel if you haven’t done so. This actually requires sudo permission. Note: the package name varies with the OS distribution, please check this.
• In the src folder, run make.
• If no error occurs, run make install.
• You will see bin and share under your $HOME/.local/ folder.
• Add the alias in your .bashrc or .zshrc.

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alias vim="$HOME/.local/bin/vim"

Note: I tried to add $HOME/.local/bin to $PATH but failed. The vim is still the old version. The alias works for me.

End

Now there is no “Unknown option: relativenumber” error showing up when I open vim.