vim in dapper fails at "syntax on"

[Alan Tam]

sltam@beech:~$ head -1 .vimrc
syntax on
sltam@beech:~$ vim
Error detected while processing /home/sltam/.vimrc:
line 1:
E484: Can't open file /usr/share/vim/syntax/syntax.vim

"dpkg -L vim" shows that syntax.vim is in /usr/share/vim/vim64/syntax/

[WillDyson (will-dyson)]

Indeed several other things fail to work, as vim 6.4-001+2ubuntu2 still thinks
that $VIMRUNTIME is '/usr/share/vim/vim63'. This is because it still thinks its
version is 6.3.78.

You can set $VIMRUNTIME in your shell to work around this.

[Alan Tam (at)]

Tried:
sltam@beech~$ $VIMRUNTIME=/usr/share/vim/vim64 vim

It seems failed to honor my "syntax on" and others in /etc/vim/vimrc .

In addition, this key mapping (work in 6.3) fails:
:nmap m :make<CR>
When I press "m", it complains: E500: Evaluates to an empty string

But if I change it to
:nmap m :make
Then it works fine.

Setting severity to major since it causes major functionality loss.

[Alan Tam (at)]

The command I executed should be:
sltam@beech~$ VIMRUNTIME=/usr/share/vim/vim64 vim

[Matt Zimmerman (mdz)]

*** Bug 25895 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

[Martin Pitt (pitti)]

I cannot reproduce this. vim works fine with my ancient-old .vimrc, in a fresh
profile without any .vimrc, and with a .vimrc that only contains 'syntax on'.
Maybe your .vimrc sets a specific VIMRUNTIME path? If you are unsure, just
attach your .vimrc if it does not contain any confidential information.

[Alan Tam (at)]

I just "mv .vimrc .vimrc-old", run "vim" and then ":syntax on", it shows:
E484: Can't open file /usr/share/vim/syntax/syntax.vim

I uncommented "syntax on" in /etc/vim/vimrc and run "vim", it shows:
sltam@maple:~$ vim
Error detected while processing /usr/share/vim/vimrc:
line 35:
E484: Can't open file /usr/share/vim/syntax/syntax.vimWarning: Color name
"#efebe7 " is not defined

I just tried "apt-get remove --purge vim" followed by "apt-get install vim" and
it is cured!

Probably something bad happened to the upgrade procedure?

[Daniel Stone (daniels)]

the latter sounds somewhat like mcpp troubles. are you running 2.5-1ubuntu1 of
mcpp or just 2.5-1?

[Alan Tam (at)]

2.5-1ubuntu1

When will vim use mcpp?

[Daniel Stone (daniels)]

xrdb uses it to manage X resources

[Alan Tam (at)]

I can't find how vim indirectly depend on xrdb.

Do you mean vim will ask xrdb for the path of vim runtime,
and it is mcpp that incorrectly reported /usr/share/vim instead of
/usr/share/vim/vim64 ?

[Martin Pitt (pitti)]

Reassigning to Daniel, you obviously already have a clue what's going on here.
It just works for me...

[Vincent Untz (vuntz)]

I also fail to see why xrdb would be the cause of the problem: it happens with
vim (the non-graphical version) too.

Also, it used to report version 6.3.xxx instead of 6.4.1 as version.

"apt-get remove --purge vim && apt-get install vim" does indeed solve the problem.

[Daniel Stone (daniels)]

err. i was talking about alan's troubles more than anything, with the space
after the colour. i have no idea about vim63 vs vim64 and am away all next
week, so don't look at me if you need a speedy resolution. ;)

[WillDyson (will-dyson)]

The problem seems to be the switch from using diversions to /etc/alternatives to
manage /usr/bin/vim. I don't know why I didn't think to look for this before,
but somehow the upgrade to 6.4 did not replace /usr/bin/vim with a symlink to
/etc/alternatives/vim. Nor did it remove the diversion of /usr/bin/vim to
/usr/bin/vim.org by vim-gnome.

So the reason that running "vim" reports a version of 6.3.78 is that the 6.3.78
vim-gnome binary is still sitting there at /usr/bin/vim!

Unfortunatly, I don't have the vim-gnome 6.3.78 prerm/postrm scripts handy to
troubleshoot right now.

[WillDyson (will-dyson)]

(In reply to comment #14)

> Unfortunatly, I don't have the vim-gnome 6.3.78 prerm/postrm scripts handy to
> troubleshoot right now.

I took a look, and it seems to me that none of the maintainer scripts even
attempt to remove the diversion on upgrade (only on remove, or failed-upgrade).

Interestingly, on my desktop system running debian unstable, the same upgrade
also left me with a stale diversion by vim-gnome (debian bug #341081). However,
in that case, the /usr/bin/vim binary was successfully removed and replaced with
a symlink to /etc/alternatives/vim. I never would have noticed the stale
diversion there if it wasn't for this problem on my laptop after moving to dapper.

If I revert back to 6.3-078+1ubuntu3 and try the upgrade again, I still get the
apparently harmless leftover diversion, but I cannot make vim-gnome leave behind
a copy of /usr/bin/vim. Perhaps the particular version of dpkg that I had
installed at that time made the difference?? I upgraded from breezy to dapper
very early on (almost as soon as breezy was released. I recall that vim was one
of the very first packages to be upgraded in dapper).

[Alan Tam (at)]

Mark as fixed since I no longer see it.