How to get global application menu for gvim?

Question

Gvim does not have a global menu (appmenu / application menu) in 12.04, and when starting gvim from a terminal, the following warning appears in the terminal after 25 seconds:

** (gvim:20320): WARNING **: Unable to create Ubuntu Menu Proxy: Timeout was reached

How to fix this?

Answer 1

Solution 1: Make the global menu for gvim work

To get global menu for gvim and to get rid of the warning message, add this to ~/.bashrc and restart the terminal:

function gvim () { (/usr/bin/gvim -f "$@" &) }

Solution 2: Disable global menu for gvim

To just get rid of the warning message, you can disable the global menu, at least for gvim:

• How do I disable the global application menu?
  • Answer #133005 - Several options for how to disable the global menu

For example, add this to ~/.bashrc and restart the terminal:

alias gvim='UBUNTU_MENUPROXY= gvim'

References

• https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/vim/+bug/972968
• https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/vim/+bug/776499
• https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/vim/+bug/987707
• http://askubuntu.com/a/132581

Answer 2

There is a workaround here: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/vim/+bug/776499

Create an alias at the top of your shell init file (e.g. ~/.bashrc):

alias gvim="UBUNTU_MENUPROXY=0 gvim"

Answer 3

My Ubuntu 12.04 amd64 can work with gvim -f.

---

• vim-gnome: 2:7.3.429-2ubuntu2.1+aptbuild1
• terminator: 0.96-0ubuntu1+aptbuild1
• guake: 0.4.2-7+aptbuild1

Answer 4

I can add the -f(--nofork) option when start gvim:

alias gvim="gvim -f"

This only works for gvim.
firefox and others don't have this -f option.