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I'm on Ubuntu 12.04 and want to know how to update Vim via the command line. What is the command to update this?

5 Answers 5

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To get the latest stable version, it is recommended by the official instructions to directly install it from the source GitHub repository.

$ git clone https://github.com/vim/vim.git
$ cd vim/src
$ make
$ sudo make install

You can also use apt-get update && apt-get install vim to update Vim to the latest version available in your distribution's packages registry. To update all available packages, you can run apt-get update && apt-get upgrade

However, you may not get the latest version of Vim with APT (you'll moszt likely the latest major version, but not the minor / patch versions).

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  • 3
    I needed to run ./configure before make. Also, using checkinstall instead of make install might be a good idea, if you ever plan on updating Vim.
    – MikaelF
    Jan 30, 2020 at 6:07
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    vim git repo is so huge man.
    – CKM
    May 10, 2020 at 3:10
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Run these commands in a terminal:

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install vim

Note that Ubuntu may not always have the latest packages due to the [official] repositories being frozen.

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    To get the latest version available, check my answer
    – d4nyll
    Jan 31, 2018 at 20:38
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the best answer to this question is https://vi.stackexchange.com/a/10827/32151

and according to the linked answer, another way to doing this is using Personal Packet Archive (PPA)

add this PPA

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:jonathonf/vim

Update the package lists:

sudo apt update

install vim:

sudo apt install vim
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2

I would generally recommend using sudo apt-get update ; sudo apt-get dist-upgrade, as this will update everything that apt-get can update on your system. If you don't already have VIM installed, you can get it using sudo apt-get install vim.

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If you are working on Ubuntu16/CentOS7, you can use below commands to install latest vim.

Ubuntu16

sudo apt-get install gcc git ncurses-dev
git clone --depth=1 https://github.com/vim/vim.git
cd vim/src
sudo make
sudo make install

Centos7

change first command to:

sudo yum install gcc git ncurses-devel

Logout and login if you are still seeing older version.

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    "Logout and login if you are still seeing older version." yep, this was the solution for me. I don't know how this could even be a problem. Oct 21, 2020 at 12:37

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