How to install Vim 8 in Debian 8?

Question

Debian 8 (Jessie) has vim 7 in repositories. I would like to have vim 8 instead (or alongside). Is it possible to get vim 8 on Debian 8 without having to compile it from source, by just installing it using the package manager?

Answer 1

I went for installing vim 8 locally in my home directory. The choice has a drawback: it works for systems with a single user only.

This is how I did it:

1. Uncommented source repositories for apt in /etc (they were commented by default)

2. Installed the dependencies required to build vim

   $ sudo apt-get build-dep vim

3. Downloaded the vim 8 source tarball

   $ wget http://ftp.vim.org/pub/vim/unix/vim-8.0.tar.bz2

4. Unpacked it

   $ tar xf vim-8.0.tar.bz2

5. Changed directory into unpacked source

   $ cd vim80/

6. Ran configure. The important argument here is --prefix, there can be additional ones if there are requirements for enabling additional features (python support in my example, for some vim plugins that need it)

   $ ./configure --prefix=$HOME/.local --enable-pythoninterp=yes

7. Compiled and installed into ~/.local

   $ make install