How to run mvim (MacVim) from Terminal?

Question

I have MacVim installed and I am trying to set it up as the editor for Git (version control), but I can't run 'mvim' from the command line as it isn't recognised. How do I setup mvim so I can run it from Terminal?

Answer 1

If you already have macVim installed: /Applications/MacVim.app/Contents/MacOS/Vim -g will give you macVim GUI.

just add an alias.

i use gvim because that is what i use on linux for gnome-vim.

alias gvim='/Applications/MacVim.app/Contents/MacOS/Vim -g'

Answer 2

For Mac .app bundles, you should install them via cask, if available, as using symlinks can cause issues. You may even get the following warning if you brew linkapps:

Unfortunately brew linkapps cannot behave nicely with e.g. Spotlight using either aliases or symlinks and Homebrew formulae do not build "proper" .app bundles that can be relocated. Instead, please consider using brew cask and migrate formulae using .apps to casks.

For MacVim, you can install with:

brew cask install macvim

You should then be able to launch MacVim like you do any other macOS app, including mvim or open -a MacVim from a terminal session.

Answer 3

I'm adding Bard Park's comment here for that was the real answer for me:

Since mvim is simply a shell script, you can download it directly from the MacVim source at GitHub here: http://raw.github.com/b4winckler/macvim/master/src/MacVim/mvim

Answer 4

In addition, if you want to use MacVim (or GVim) as $VISUAL or $EDITOR, you should be aware that by default MacVim will fork a new process from the parent, resulting in the MacVim return value not reaching the parent process. This may confuse other applications, but Git seems to check the status of a temporary commit message file, which bypasses this limitation. In general, it is a good practice to export VISUAL='mvim -f' to ensure MacVim will not fork a new process when called, which should give you what you want when using it with your shell environment.

Answer 5

There should be a script named mvim in the root of the .bz2 file. Copy this somewhere into your $PATH ( /usr/local/bin would be good ) and you should be sorted.

Answer 6

Here's what I did:

After building Macvim I copied mvim to one of my $PATH destinations (In this case I chose /usr/local/bin)

cp -v [MacVim_source_folder]/src/MacVim/mvim /usr/local/bin

Then when you invoke mvim it is now recognised but there is an annoying thing. It opens the visual MacVim window, not the one in terminal. To do that, you have to invoke

mvim -v

To make sure every time you call mvim you don't have to remember to add the '-v' you can create an alias:

alias mvim='mvim -v'

However, this alias will only persist for this session of the Terminal. To have this alias executed every time you open a Terminal window, you have to include it in your .profile The .profile should be in your home directory. If it's not, create it.

cd ~
mvim -v .profile

include the alias command in there and save it.

That's it.