vim launches X11?

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vim launches X11?

Howdy, all! I do a lot of work in Terminal.app and use vim as my primary editor. I've found that whenever I launch vim within Terminal.app the system launches a copy of X11.

Is there any GUI way to stop X11 from launching? It's quite annoying waiting for X11 to launch whenever I open vim.

Thanks,
-Jack

Macbook Pro, Mac OS X (10.5.1)

Posted on Dec 4, 2007 2:39 PM

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Answer 1

etresoft

Level 9

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Dec 4, 2007 2:58 PM in response to Exegete

It sounds as if the vim you are using has the X11 gui. Try downloading MacVim.

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Answer 2

Exegete Author

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Dec 4, 2007 3:04 PM in response to etresoft

I actually don't use it in X11 at all, but purely from Terminal.app. Because I bounce around multiple servers using ssh, I try to keep it consistent.

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Answer 3

Dec 4, 2007 3:34 PM in response to Exegete

What do you get from this command:

macbook:~ michaelc$ ls -al `which vim` `which vi`
lrwxr-xr-x 1 root wheel 3 6 Nov 15:36 /usr/bin/vi -> vim
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root wheel 2648864 6 Oct 04:00 /usr/bin/vim

Maybe you are picking up another vim from somewhere.

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Answer 4

Exegete Author

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Dec 5, 2007 6:27 AM in response to Michael Conniff

Though I did figure out what's going on...

exe@Worm ~ 07:03:52> ls -alh `which vim` `which vi` /usr/local/vim7/bin/vim; alias vi;
lrwxr-xr-x 1 root wheel 3B Oct 30 16:43 /usr/bin/vi -> vim
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root wheel 2.5M Oct 5 20:00 /usr/bin/vim
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root wheel 1.4M Jul 9 09:48 /usr/local/vim7/bin/vim
alias vi='/usr/local/vim7/bin/vim'

What I found is this:
exe@Worm ~ 07:05:01> env | grep DISPLAY
DISPLAY=/tmp/launch-MMxq1U/:0

This socket is launching X11 whenever anything touches it. vim is "exploring the space", as it were, and seeing if X11 is running on the current $DISPLAY. Simply nulling this variable takes care of the issue. Great functionality, just unexpected behavior.

Thanks for the help, guys/gals!

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