In my old VIM version (5.4) I could put the line "set nu" in
my .exrc file and have line numbers on the file I was editing.
Since I upgraded to VIM 7.0, I've discovered no option for the
.vimrc file to do the same thing. Have I missed something?
Putting the "set nu" in your vimrc *should* do exactly as you
expect. However, some plugin or something of the sort may be
changing the setting later in the course of startup. You can try
:verbose set nu?
from the command line after starting up, and it should tell you
from whence it was last set. If it's not your vimrc (which it
*should* be), it should indicate what's happening.
Another remote possibility is that, with vim7, there's a
'numberwidth' setting that controls the width of the column in
which the line-numbers are displayed. You might have this set to
its minimum of 1 perhaps?
To demonstrate that it *should* work, you can create a file
called vimrc_justnumber, containing the single line "set nu", and
then start vim with
vim -u vimrc_justnumber
which should use this custom vimrc and set *only* that one option.
HTH,
-tim