Proper vim-latex config on Ubuntu

Question

I have installed vim-latex package using Ubuntu Synaptic package manager. I followed the instructions here to edit my .vimrc file. However, when I open up a .tex file in Vim, none of the new menu options appear and I can’t seem to compile documents using \ll. What did I do wrong?

Answer 1

In Debian (and Ubuntu, consequently) Vim plugins are installed in two steps:

1. The plugin files are installed from the .deb package containing that plugin.
2. Symbolic links to that files are created in ~/.vim directories for users that want to use that plugin.

This latter step should be performed manually by the administrator or the users themselves using the vim-addons script, which allows to examine all Vim plugins available in the system (that is, installed from packages), and check their status, both system-wide and for the current user:

$ vim-addons status

To install a plugin (say, latex-suite), run the command

$ vim-addons install latex-suite

where the last argument stands for the name of the plugin you want to install (check the output of the previuos command to find out the correct name).

If you want to install it system-wide, run this command as the root user and add -w option. It is rarely recommended to install a plugin system-wide, though.

Similarly, you can remove a plugin from your ~/.vim directory using

$ vim-addons remove latex-suite

Again, vim-addons does not alter plugins’ files themselves, it only modifies the links to the files installed from deb-packages.