Question

I downloaded vim-7.3.tar.bz2, which is said containing source and runtime. I unpacked it but I cannot find the executable for vim program. Where is it?

Answer 1

The usual steps are:

$ ./configure --prefix=/home/username
$ make
$ make install

There are many ways to customize the whole process, you should do $ ./configure --help before anything to have an idea of what you can do.

1. The first step is where you define all the options used for building. $ ./configure without options just uses the default settings.

2. The second step is the building itself.

3. The last step is where the executable is moved to the path given at configuration time, /home/username/bin/vim in my example.

Another solution is to simply do $ make, move the executable where you want and make sure this location belongs to your path or create an alias.