Get latest releases for syntax highlighting, runtime, plugins etc
From Vim Tips Wiki
Tip 744 Previous Next created June 14, 2004 · complexity basic · author Charles E. Campbell, Jr. · version 5.7
Do you want the latest, official syntax highlighting files, runtime scripts, documents, macros, language support, plugins, etc? See
ftp://ftp.home.vim.org/pub/vim/runtime ftp://ftp.home.vim.org/pub/vim/runtime/colors ftp://ftp.home.vim.org/pub/vim/runtime/compiler ftp://ftp.home.vim.org/pub/vim/runtime/doc ftp://ftp.home.vim.org/pub/vim/runtime/lang ftp://ftp.home.vim.org/pub/vim/runtime/macros ftp://ftp.home.vim.org/pub/vim/runtime/syntax ftp://ftp.home.vim.org/pub/vim/runtime/tools
Patches and whatnot are distributed on vim-dev, but typically don't contain the updates to files in the directories above. If you're having a problm with syntax highlighting, for instance, check the syntax repository above just in case its been fixed already.
In my own case, I put experimental versions of syntax highlighting files and plugins that I maintain on http://mysite.verizon.net/astronaut/vim, such as netrw.vim (netrw v46a now supports remote directory listing for example).
[edit] Comments
Well, if you're using Gentoo you don't need to worry, because we include runtime patches when we do app-editors/vim-core updates. Other distributions vary, of course.
I have a shell script that I run every so often that maintains a local mirror of the Vim runtime files from ftp.vim.org. When I run the script, it downloads any updated files from the master FTP server, and then does a diff against my installed vim runtime files. Crude, but effective. :-)
Personally I would much rather see patches against the runtime files, since I always install those as they come out. Or even better, I'd like to see CVS used as more of a core tool instead of occasionally lagging a few days behind development.
If you have rsync installed, you can use it to synchronize your runtime files. I use it to keep my "master" runtimes up-to-date, currently at ~/.build/vim/vim72/runtime/, as follows (the "parent" vim72 directory being the current directory):
rsync -avzcP --delete --exclude="/dos/" ftp.nluug.nl::Vim/runtime/ ./runtime/
On Linux, I follow that by a make installruntime step if anything other than tags has been updated.
Note: Even on Windows, where I expect rsync to be available at least via Cygwin and/or MinGW and/or GnuWin32, I recommend downloading the "Unix" runtimes; even Vim for Windows can source them with no problem. It's true that Notepad cannot display them correctly, but Wordpad can. — Tonymec 05:45, 6 May 2009 (UTC)
