What is the difference between MacVim and Vim?

Question

I am trying to get started using VIM on OSX but I am having trouble trying to see which one I should use? I can go to terminal and type vim and the editor comes up, but I have also been reading up online and some people say to use MacVim. I am not sure on what the difference is between the built in vim and MacVim.

Answer 1

The Vim that ships with OS X is outdated and doesn't come with a GUI, if you care about that. MacVim is current and you can use it from the terminal as well, you just have to install the mvim utility that comes with it and make a symlink named vim that points to mvim. See :h mvim in MacVim.

Answer 2

For most purposes vim at the command-line is the same as what is in MacVim, minus some bug fixes and the GUI.

I use them both. For longer editing jobs, or when I need to have many files open, I tend to go with the GUI version, though the command-line version can open them too. I just prefer the look.

Using either/both is fine, because the command-line version will honor the settings in your ~/.vimrc and plugins in ~/.vim. I use vim/gvim on all my machines (Mac OS, Linuxes like Centos, Ubuntu and Mint, and Windows) and just copy a tarball around of the settings when I compile a new version on some machine.