Building

How to get the MacVim source code

Open up Terminal and type (this requires that you have Git installed):

$ git clone git://github.com/b4winckler/macvim.git

(If you do not have Git installed the "Download" button under the "Source" tab lets you download an archive containing the source code.)

How to build MacVim

First clone the repo as above, then configure with the flags you want, e.g.:

$ cd macvim/src
$ ./configure --with-features=huge \
              --enable-rubyinterp \
              --enable-pythoninterp \
              --enable-perlinterp \
              --enable-cscope

Once this has finished, build the project:

$ make

The resulting app bundle will reside under MacVim/build/Release. To try it out quickly, type:

$ open MacVim/build/Release/MacVim.app

To install MacVim, type

$ open MacVim/build/Release

and drag the MacVim icon into your Applications folder.

Enabling extra features

You can enable extra Vim features by passing the appropriate flags to configure. These are the parameters to configure you are most likely to want to enable:

• All standard features: --with-features=huge
• Cscope support: --enable-cscope
• Python interpreter: --enable-pythoninterp
• Ruby interpreter: --enable-rubyinterp
• Perl interpreter: --enable-perlinterp
• Universal binary: --with-macarchs=ARCHS (ARCHS=x86_64,i386,ppc,.., one or more items in quotation marks separated by spaces)
• Mac OS X SDK version: --with-macsdk=VER (VER=10.4,10.5,10.6,..)

To see all available flags, type ./configure --help.

Notes on document icons

The MacVim document icons are generated automatically during the build. The smallest document icon (16x16 pixels) can use a non-stock font called Envy Code R which makes it more legible. In order to use this font you must first download it manually as follows (commands should be issued from the src/ folder):

$ cd MacVim/icons
$ make getenvy

The next time you build (make sure to make clean first) the custom font will be used to build the smallest document icons.

Note that the official build of MacVim uses the Envy Code R font.