Learning the vi and Vim Editors, 7th Edition

Sources and Supported Operating Systems

The official WWW location for elvis is ftp://ftp.cs.pdx.edu/pub/elvis/README.html. From there, you can download the elvis distribution or get it directly, using ftp from ftp://ftp.cs.pdx.edu/pub/elvis/elvis-2.2_0.tar.gz.

The source code for elvis is freely distributable. elvis is distributed under the terms of perl’s Artistic License. The licensing terms are described in the doc/license.html file in the distribution.

elvis works under Unix, OS/2, MS-DOS, and modern versions of MS Windows. The Unix and Windows ports provide a graphical user interface. The MS-DOS version includes mouse support.

Compiling elvis is straightforward. Retrieve the distribution via ftp or via a web browser. Uncompress and untar it,^[57] run the configure program, and then run make:

$gzip -d < elvis-2.2_0.tar.gz | tar -xvpf -
...
$ cd elvis-2.2_0; ./configure
...
$ make
...

elvis should configure and build with no problems. Use make install to install it.

Note

The default configuration causes elvis to install itself in standard system directories, such as /usr/bin, /usr/share, and so on. If you wish to have things installed in /usr/local, use the --prefix option to the configure script.

Should you need to report a bug or problem in elvis, the person to contact is Steve Kirkendall at [e-mail].

^[57] The untar.c program available from the elvis ftp site is a very portable, simple program for unpacking gziped tar files on non-Unix systems.