MacVim: Request to create 'gvim', 'gvimdiff', ... symbolic links in addition to 'mvim' series

[alexey.muranov@…]

Would it be possible to create /opt/local/bin/gvim, .../gvimdiff, etc. symbolic links in addition to /opt/local/bin/mvim, .../mvimdiff, ... ? This would allow git mergetool gvimdiff work out of the box.

See also this Homebrew issue: ​https://github.com/mxcl/homebrew/issues/14458

Thanks.

[alexey.muranov@…]

In fact, for git mergetool it was enough to create just 'gvim' symbolic link, i did it manually.

[larryv (Lawrence Velázquez)]

Thanks for the ticket. In the future, please try to Cc the relevant port maintainers.

[larryv (Lawrence Velázquez)]

Note that this change would make MacVim conflict with vim-app, although maybe that wouldn’t be a big deal.

[raimue (Rainer Müller)]

Replying to larryv@…:

Note that this change would make MacVim conflict with vim-app, although maybe that wouldn’t be a big deal.

Actually this would not be the conflict as vim-app is for OS X <10.6 while MacVim is for >=10.6. The real problem would be with vim +gtk2 (or any other GUI variant) which already provides the gvim symlinks.

[alexey.muranov@…]

Maybe just some message can be printed during the installation saying how and why to symlink mvim to gvim?

I used

sudo ln -s /opt/local/bin/mvim /usr/local/bin/gvim

[larryv (Lawrence Velázquez)]

Replying to raimue@…:

Actually this would not be the conflict as vim-app is for OS X <10.6 while MacVim is for >=10.6.

Oh, oops. Guess that's what happens when I just skim the portfiles.

[raimue (Rainer Müller)]

Replying to alexey.muranov@…:

sudo ln -s /opt/local/bin/mvim /usr/local/bin/gvim

Fine that this works for you. However, this is not a solution for everyone as /opt/local/bin usually comes before /usr/local/bin in PATH, which means that vim +gtk2 would still take preference over MacVim. I am not opposed to adding a way to make MacVim accessible using gvim*, but right now I don't see a way to avoid the conflict with vim (since we cannot add conflicts on specific variants) or the need for a port select gvim.

However, if git mergetool is your main use case, I can suggest two different ways to solve this in .gitconfig:

1. Override gvimdiff with mvimdiff:

   [difftool "gvimdiff"]
       path = /opt/local/bin/mvimdiff
   

2. Add an additional mergetool:

   [mergetool "mvimdiff"]
       cmd = /opt/local/bin/mvimdiff -f "$LOCAL" "$MERGED" "$REMOTE"
   [merge]
       tool = mvimdiff
   

[alexey.muranov@…]

@raimue, thanks for the suggested solutions for the git mergetool, but i cannot test them right now, and my solution works for me. However, i tried something similar with .gitconfig before, and i could not get it to use mvim with the same window layout as it does with gvim. I also have doubts about your solution with

path = /opt/local/bin/mvimdiff

because i discovered that git mergetool gvimdiff does not call gvimdiff but apparently calls gvim directly.

[raimue (Rainer Müller)]

As explained above, the 'gvim*' binaries are reserved for vim with a GUI variant.