vim.tiny and vimrc

I tried installing my dotfiles on an unmodified Ubuntu install. My vimrc threw many errors. Ubuntu and other Debian based distros install the tiny build of vim by default, which has a lot of features disabled, including eval, but still loads the user vimrc. That means that many things that might be in there, including function and even let, do not exist in tiny. :help no-eval-feature provides a solution: Wrap everything that should only work in +eval capable versions of vim in if 1 … endif.

Things that tiny does support include:

  • most set. Ones that don’t exist don’t seem to throw an error from vimrc
  • map and variants, though what is mapped might not work when called
  • augroup and autocmd, though events may not work right
  • some filetype. filetype plugin indent on caused errors for me
  • colorscheme works, though no color schemes are installed. If I use one of the standard vim color scheme files, I get an error because of the let in them
  • if structures and any syntax in them are basically ignored

I went through and if’d the erroring stuff in my vimrc and now am able to get a tiny vim with at least some of my settings. I haven’t thoroughly tested this, and would most likely install regular vim on any machine I’m using long enough to install my dotfiles on anyway. This was just a quick fix for those rare cases where I’m in vim.tiny.


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