Why can't vim find syntax.vim on my fresh Ubuntu installation?

Question

I'm trying to make some basic customizations to vim. All I want is some syntax highlighting, etc. Basically, not just plain text.

I have a basic .vimrc file. It shows errors each time vim starts up and no text highlighting. My file consists of 7 lines:

backspace=2
syntax on
filetype indent on
set autoindent
set number
colorscheme desert
set nobackup

Every time I launch vim, I get these errors:

E492: Not an editor command: backspace=2
E484: Can't open file /usr/share/vim/syntax/syntax.vim

For the first error, I have no idea what is wrong, but it probably isn't too tough for someone with some experience. The latter problem just might stem from the fact that I don't have a /usr/share/vim folder. I would have thought that this would have been created when I installed vim. So, what do I do now?

Answer 1

First things first, sit back, relax, and take a few deep breaths. Okay, relaxed now?

For the first error, you need:

set backspace=2

The second one I can only assume occurred becaue you're not using the standard vim that ships with Ubuntu, or your environment has become broken somehow. What you probably need to do is actually find the syntax file with something like:

find / -name syntax.vim 2>/dev/null

and then ensure that your VIMRUNTIME environment variable is set correctly for that (for example, if the file was located at /xyzzy/plugh/syntax/syntax.vim, then you would set the variable to be /xyzzy/plugh).

Answer 2

For the first error, you're setting an option. That uses the set command, and that's all there is to it.

set backspace=2

For the second error, you're missing the system file /usr/share/vim/syntax/syntax.vim. That means you need to install the package that provides this file. There is a generic method to find out what that package is, for any file provided by Ubuntu. (The same method works on Debian, mutatis mutandis.)

On http://packages.ubuntu.com, search the contents of packages for the keyword syntax.vim. This leads you to the vim-runtime package. You can also perform this search on your machine if you install the apt-file package, by running the command apt-file search syntax.vim.

In this case, you need more than just the vim-runtime package. In fact, don't install it now, read on. The default Ubuntu installation only includes a tiny version of vim that lacks most bells and whistles (it's just meant as a quick way of editing a configuration file). For serious work, you need to install a full version of vim. You have a choice of no GUI or various GUIs. All of the non-tiny versions pull in the usual advanced features such as syntax highlighting (they depend on the vim-runtime package).