vimtutor does not load the tutor file correctly if vim-gnome is not installed

[QuentinHartman]

Binary package hint: vim-runtime

SSIA, really. running "vimtutor" on my Hardy x64 box gives me an empty vim instance. The tutor files are correctly installed, so I copied the tutor file into my homedir and ran "vim tutor" and everything works, but stilll...

[Andrew McCarthy (andrewmccarthy)]

Thanks for filing this bug, but I'm not able to reproduce it. Can you try the following:

When you run "vimtutor", and the file appears empty, is there a filename displayed at the bottom of the screen? For example, on mine I see
    "/tmp/tutorh19082" 970 lines, 33142 characters

To ensure that it's not something in your environment, can you try running it as "env - vimtutor"?

Thanks!

[QuentinHartman (qhartman)]

Well, this seems to have either been fixed in the intervening time, or there was something wrong with that particular installation. I've tested this on both and Intrepid box and two Hardy boxes, and they both behave as expected now.

[TomasHnyk (sup)]

This affects me on up-to-date Intrepid. This is only reproducible if gnome-vim is not installed. I do not understand it, but when I instal vim-gnome, vimtutor starts working, if I remove it, wimtutor stops working.

env - vimtutor gives empty file and this:
"/tmp/tutorN31924" 0 lines, 0 characters

[Andrew McCarthy (andrewmccarthy)]

Running vimtutor causes Vim to source /usr/share/vim/vim71/tutor/tutor.vim in order to copy the tutor file to a temporary location. However, without vim-gnome installed (which is the "full" version of Vim), the default version of Vim cannot fully execute all of the tutor.vim script:

Error detected while processing /usr/share/vim/vim71/tutor/tutor.vim:
line 13:
E319: Sorry, the command is not available in this version: let s:ext = ""
line 158:
E319: Sorry, the command is not available in this version: let s:tutorfile = "/tutor/tutor"
line 159:
E319: Sorry, the command is not available in this version: let s:tutorxx = $VIMRUNTIME . s:tutorfile . s:ext

[Meeko (bjorn-aarset)]

Installing vim-full solves it for me.

[James McCoy (jamessan)]

This problem is happening because the users only have vim-tiny installed and manually installed vim-runtime instead of installing a more featureful vim package (vim, vim-nox, vim-gtk, vim-gnome) which will automatically pull in vim-runtime.

Ideally users won't run into this as much once they upgrade to a 2:7.2.049-1 or later since that removes the vim alternative from vim-tiny, thus making it more likely they'll install one of the other vim packages (and hopefully removing a lot of confusion about how vim behaves when only vim-tiny is installed).

[Jaime Moreno (daviangel)]

This bug is still in latest 10.10 release.
If I type vimtutor in a terminal on a new install it tells me to run:

sudo apt-get install vim-runtime

only problem is that after that if I type
vimtutor I get a blank/empty file as mentioned.
Only way to fix it is to install the full vim package which the "unhelpful" terminal suggestion never tells you.

[Muyu Li (lmy0525)]

when I ran vimtutor
I got this file opend
"/tmp/tutor1uFkLx" 0 lines, 0 characters
what should I do?

[Chris Wyatt (wyattmeister)]

Panic!