The problem: If MacVim is not installed in one of the common directories and
the mvim script called from the shell prompt is actually a symbolic link
(symlink) to the original mvim script, the script will probably fail with the
error message:
Sorry, cannot find MacVim.app. Try setting the VIM_APP_DIR
environment variable to the directory containing MacVim.app.
As the error message says, one could set the VIM_APP_DIR environment variable
to resolve this, but I've noticed a small change to the mvim script that can
eliminate the need for that variable in many cases.
The background: I don't like to install non-Apple applications in
/Applications if I can avoid it. I like to install them in /Local/Applications
instead. When I installed MacVim, I did that. The app and the mvim script
are in a MacVim folder, so that their full paths are:
/Local/Applications/MacVim/MacVim.app
/Local/Applications/MacVim/mvim
I have a bin directory in my home directory and $HOME/bin is in my path. To
add the mvim script to my path, I created a symlink to the mvim script in its
installation directory. That is:
$HOME/bin/mvim - /Local/Applications/MacVim/mvim
When I call the mvim script, I get the error mentioned above because the
correct directory is not returned from this link of the mvim script:
myDir=`dirname $0`
myDir ends up with the value of $HOME/bin, which is not where MacVim.app is
installed. A possible solution would be to also add a symlink to MacVim.app in
$HOME/bin, but that doesn't feel right.
My solution: Replace the setting of myDir in the mvim script with this:
myDir=$(dirname $(readlink $0))
if [ -z $myDir ]
then
myDir=`dirname $0`
fi
This uses the readlink utility to try to read the original file to which the
current script name links. If the result is an empty string (probably because
the script name probably wasn't a symlink), fall back to using the current
script name, as before
This is a good solution, because if these additional lines were added to the
distributed mvim script, it would eliminate the need for more users to edit the
script or set the VIM_APP_DIR environment variable.
I thought of posting this as a bug to the MacVim issue tracker, but since it
feels more like an enhancement or feature request, I followed the instructions
to post about it here first.
--
--
You received this message from the vim_mac maillist.
Do not top-post! Type your reply below the text you are replying to.
For more information, visit http://www.vim.org/maillist.php
---
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups
vim_mac group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email
to vim_mac+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
