gVim Portable 7.2 Released by PortableApps.com

Chris Morgan's picture
Submitted by Chris Morgan on October 13, 2009 - 10:52am

Notepadpp logogVim Portable 7.2 has been released by PortableApps.com. gVim Portable is a feature-rich and not-too-hard-to-use text editor packaged as a portable app, and a very feature rich one at that. With gVim you can code, highlight syntax, and do everything else you would expect of a text editor worth its weight in megabytes. It's packaged in PortableApps.com Format so it can easily integrate with the PortableApps.com Suite. And it's open source and completely free.

Read on for more details...

Features

Notepad++ Portable ScreenshotVim is a highly configurable text editor built to enable efficient text editing. It is an improved version of the vi editor distributed with most UNIX systems.

Vim is often called a "programmer's editor," and so useful for programming that many consider it an entire IDE. It's not just for programmers, though. Vim is perfect for all kinds of text editing, from composing email to editing configuration files.

Vim can be configured to work in a very simple (Notepad-like) way, called evim or Easy Vim.

PortableApps.com Installer / PortableApps.com Format

gVim Portable is packaged in a PortableApps.com Installer so it will automatically detect an existing PortableApps.com installation when your drive is plugged in. It supports upgrades by installing right over an existing copy, preserving all settings. And it's in PortableApps.com Format, so it automatically works with the PortableApps.com Suite including the Menu and Backup Utility.

Download

gVim Portable is available for immediate download from the gVim Portable homepage. Get it today!

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Comments

John T. Haller's picture

Thanks for all your work on this one Chris.

Sometimes, the impossible can become possible, if you're awesome!

John T. Haller's picture

Fixed, sorry Smile

Sometimes, the impossible can become possible, if you're awesome!

Great work, Chris. I'm not a gVim guy myself, but it's great to see the application list expanding more and more. Smile

Vim isn't something you just try...
It is a lifestyle Smile

________________________________
Art Cowles

​"When an honest man discovers he is mistaken,
he will either cease to be mistaken or cease to be honest."

OliverK's picture

absolutely.

Too many lonely hearts in the real world
Too many bridges you can burn
Too many tables you can't turn
Don't wanna live my life in the real world

gVim Portable is a feature-rich and not-too-hard-to-use text editor packaged as a portable app, and a very feature rich one at that.

Thats kind of double, isn't it? Wink

Behold, the DutchLander has arrived.
Grammatical errors are copyrighted.

Darkbee's picture

So feature-rich that even the features have features. Wink

I use Vim on Linux a fair bit, I didn't even know this existed! Interesting, I make have to take it for a test drive.

For all the hype this seems to be getting in the comments, the screenshot apparently doesn't seem to do it justice. My first impression based on said screenshot is "Notepad++ Lite"...

OliverK's picture

Google I guess is your friend. Chris told me there's not much in the way of tutorials. I think gVim might have more features. I don't know. I'm to lazy to learn how to use it and perfectly happy with geany.

Too many lonely hearts in the real world
Too many bridges you can burn
Too many tables you can't turn
Don't wanna live my life in the real world

inghamc's picture

I often like to use vim.exe from the command line instead of or in addition to gVim -- do you have any plans to release either a separate VimPortable or add an option to include the command line version as part of gVimPortable?

Thank you for this fantastic addition to PortableApps!

Chris Morgan's picture

I don't have any intention of supporting Vim other than as gVim; I can't really think of any reason why you'd use the command-line version, the GUI is better (and if it's the menu and toolbar that you don't like, set guioptions-=Tm in Data\settings\_vimrc, that's what I've done, I found I didn't ever use them so I killed 'em). I haven't included vim.exe in the distribution though as I figured it wasn't useful and it wasn't doing anything there (you could copy it from a standard Vim build and modify and recompile Other\Source\gVimPortable.nsi with NSIS Portable, but you might get clashes between my OLE-free 7.2.245 build and the stock with-OLE 7.2.0 build).

I am a Christian and a developer and moderator here.

“A soft answer turns away wrath, but a harsh word stirs up anger.” – Proverbs 15:1

inghamc's picture

> I can't really think of any reason why you'd use
> the command-line version, the GUI is better

Well you see, I'm severely mentally and emotionally challenged, and just don't know any better, I guess Smile

As a long-time developer I still use the command line quite a bit, and when I'm already at the prompt and want to view a logfile or tweak a config file it's natural for me to vi it right then and there, exit and get on with typing the next command. Seeing as how vi is all about not lifting moving your fingers from the home row and all that, there might be others out there wanting command-line access as well - I think that's why they still provide and support it.

Seriously, I love PortableApps and it is awesome that you've given your own time to add gVim and share it with this community, so I honestly have no right to complain. I'm just saying that for me, the flexibility of choosing command line or separate window on the fly will keep me downloading from www.vim.org.

Chris Morgan's picture

Even if it were running vim.exe, it wouldn't run it in the same command-line window, as the launcher is not a command line executable (it would need to be recoded completely as such in a different language to make it be so). As far as running it from the command line is concerned, though, you can do so if you wish and all arguments will be passed on to gvim.exe. I myself generally use gVim (well, now I mainly use the desktop version because I'm on my laptop, but I'm definitely still supporting PortableApps.com) from the command line, with a doskey macro for "vi", with Command Prompt Portable, or more lately just Command Prompt with an autoexec.bat file specified. Very useful things, doskey macros.

You can use gVim just like you'd use vim from the command line - open it, it opens a new window, when you close it you'll be back to your command line window. PLUS you get the added advantage of being able to use your command line window while you're still editing the file! Wink

I am a Christian and a developer and moderator here.

“A soft answer turns away wrath, but a harsh word stirs up anger.” – Proverbs 15:1

inghamc's picture

I didn't mean to imply I was requesting the inclusion of the vim.exe command-line executable so I could click on it from the PortableApps menu. I'm just asking that vim.exe be included along with gvim.exe, so it can be referenced from, for example, the vi doskey macro you suggested.

My original post did suggest an optional or separate install -- my thought there was to save 500KB for folks like yourself who are uninterested in command-line Vim (I figured this must have been the only reason for NOT including it). I was ideally picturing a checkbox option in gVim Portable's installer.

But unless anyone else chimes in to second this request I guess I can't blame you for dismissing it.

Chris Morgan's picture

Doskey macros don't have to be to command line executables. I have set up lots of things; vi, ff [Firefox], nsis, fz [FileZilla], etc. If you were to reference vim.exe or gvim.exe directly, it wouldn't work portably. You need to reference gVimPortable.exe.

My usage is as follows (it won't work on Windows 98, 98 has a bit different syntax for the doskey call).

In commandprompt.bat:

@set USBDisk=%cd:~0,2%
@set PADir=%USBDisk%\PortableApps
@set MacrosFile=%PADir%\CommandPromptPortable\Data\Batch\doskey.txt
@doskey /macrofile=%MacrosFile%

And in doskey.txt:

vi=%PADir%\gVimPortable\gVimPortable.exe $*

It's not so much I have no use for vim, it's just that I can't find any justification for using it instead of gvim. I still can't think of any benefits of using vim where gvim is available.

I am a Christian and a developer and moderator here.

“A soft answer turns away wrath, but a harsh word stirs up anger.” – Proverbs 15:1

inghamc's picture

Look. I simply made a request for Vim as well as gVim.

I thanked and credited you for providing PortableApps gVim in the first place.

I gave you the benefit of having considered the size of the extra executable as reason for omitting it, and suggested it could be made an optional part of the install.

I granted it would be reasonable to defer the request unless others voiced their agreement.

I didn't ask for admonishment of my poor judgment to desire a console version when the windowed version is clearly superior in every conceivable way.

I also didn't request tutorials on doskey, which, given the nature of my request, I'm likely to have encountered since its introduction in, what, MS-DOS 5.

I have tried in each reply to politely clarify my request while (evidently too) subtly challenging the closed minded and pedantic tone of your responses.

So let me try another approach.

I hereby submit the following justifications for why I should not be publicly mocked for desiring to use the console version of Vim:

  1. I can run it in a telnet session to a Windows Server, or any other Windows system on which one of any number of free or commercially available telnet servers is installed.

  2. Over many years and versions of Windows I've experienced situations where the OS is sluggish to the extent that the window manager is unusable (every redraw, etc. takes forever), but where a Command Prompt is reasonably responsive.
  3. Through some bizarre combination of genetics and life experience, I have arrived at a personal preference that differs from your own. That is to say that in the majority of cases in which I choose to employ Vim over gVim, I have no justification other than the fact that I just $%^#ing prefer it.

Okay, I'll stop being an ass now. I did warn early on that I am severely emotionally challenged. And no, I don't expect at this point to ever see vim.exe included in gVim Portable.

Chris Morgan's picture

I tried to explain it earlier; it's just technically too difficult to do. NSIS executables aren't meant to be command line executables, they don't have it in them. They're GUI things, so any new instance of vim would not be in the window you launched it from, thus defeating the purpose.

Incidentally, for reference to others as for my reason in not having it, if we wanted vim.exe I'd need to recompile Vim with the CONSOLE argument (think it was that) added.

I am a Christian and a developer and moderator here.

“A soft answer turns away wrath, but a harsh word stirs up anger.” – Proverbs 15:1

OliverK's picture

I think the reason it wasn't included was it messed with the portable. As far as saving space, that bettter not be the case as there's 960kb of locales that I never ever had the option of not including. I only need english. And yes, my installers chop out the extra locales. Always have, always will.

Especially in Geany where I've got geany locales and gtk locales.

Too many lonely hearts in the real world
Too many bridges you can burn
Too many tables you can't turn
Don't wanna live my life in the real world

John T. Haller's picture

As a rule, we only make it optional when it saves *significant* space relative to the app itself. 960K of a 17MB app doesn't make the cut. GIMP, where the locales are much BIGGER than the app itself, does.

Sometimes, the impossible can become possible, if you're awesome!

OliverK's picture

Yes. I'm just saying that 500kb is no reason to exclude a executable, considering the extra locales are always included and are more space Smile

I just do it because anymore it doesn't take a TON of extra effort to make them optional.

Too many lonely hearts in the real world
Too many bridges you can burn
Too many tables you can't turn
Don't wanna live my life in the real world

Compared to the pre-release version you let us test, this one gives me problems when I execute the :make command.
It seems as if the path to the temp folder contains spaces, and vim doesn't manage to create the temporary make errorfile and complains it cannot read it. It does manage to create a file called "D:\My", Where obviously it should go into My Documents\gVimPortable\... and create the file there.
I use Win7beta and msys shell as the basis for make and mingw.

Chris Morgan's picture

I'm not sure what the issue is with that. Try putting it (gVim Portable) in a directory without spaces and see if that works. I can't work out why it would be doing this wrong though. It's possible that it's due to the custom build I did somehow but I doubt it strongly.

Could we please continue this in a new thread in the Other Apps Support forum.

I am a Christian and a developer and moderator here.

“A soft answer turns away wrath, but a harsh word stirs up anger.” – Proverbs 15:1

Chris Morgan's picture

Sorry, it's just a thing which wasn't practical for the portable version; there was no practical way of getting into vimtutor in portable mode, so that's why I deleted the vimtutor stuff.

I am a Christian and a developer and moderator here.

“A soft answer turns away wrath, but a harsh word stirs up anger.” – Proverbs 15:1

First of all, thank for your work, Chris. I love Vim, and it is great to have it portable!

I'm just missing the Perl support. Would it be possible to provide a version with this support? (compiled with the |+perl| feature)

John T. Haller's picture

I believe Chris said he was gonna work on this for a later release. It's a matter of the way it's compiled.

Sometimes, the impossible can become possible, if you're awesome!

Thanks for your quick answer!
I'm gonna wait

Chris Morgan's picture

When Vim 7.3 is released (hopefully within the month or two), I'll be asking Bram Moolenar to make an OLE-free build for us, as he's got the full build environment set up, whereas I don't (and it really is a pain to set it all up once you get to Python, Perl, Tcl and Ruby).

I am a Christian and a developer and moderator here.

“A soft answer turns away wrath, but a harsh word stirs up anger.” – Proverbs 15:1