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Is it possible to make a default gVIM installation (Windows) portable so that I can carry it on a USB stick?

I know there are a few portable distributions out there, but they all seem to be unmaintained.

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Since you are not mentioning what platform you are on, I assume it is some incarncation of Windows? – innaM Oct 15 '09 at 11:24
Edited question to add platform (Windows). – guillermooo Oct 15 '09 at 13:06
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gVim Portable is a feature rich and not-too-hard-to-use text editor, and a very feature rich one at that. With gVim you can code, highlight syntax, and do everything else you would expect of a text editor worth its weight in megabytes.

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i liked gvim portable. but i hated the fact that you can't rename the .exe file. – ldigas Oct 15 '09 at 11:34
ya .its true ;) – joe Oct 15 '09 at 11:38
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up vote 2 down vote

gVim is pretty much portable as is. If you download the binaries from vim.org, from the zip file (or .tz, I'm not sure now). and start using it you'll notice the only thing it leaves is your backup and swap and similar files in ... documents and settings ... directory.

Put this in your vimrc

set nobackup
set nowritebackup
set noswapfile
set viminfo=

and, if I'm not mistaken, it should work like a charm.

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"gVim is pretty much portable as is" .. well, thats pretty much true for all software :) – akira Oct 15 '09 at 13:05
?? ... what I ment was that gvim is portable even in its non-portable binaries distribution, if you take the above into consideration. That is hardly true for most software. ... what did you mean ? – ldigas Oct 15 '09 at 14:11
i meant that you can actually move around the folders in %PROGRAMFILES% (or their equivalent in other OS) pretty freely. i am doing this even with visual studio, the 'only' thing to do is setting some enviromnet variables... thats the normal way of deploying software: "copy it into a folder". that fact is nothing special for vim, thats all i was trying to say... dont take it too seriously. – akira Oct 15 '09 at 15:20
no, no ... non taken :) But I don't understand ... you're saying one can for example, rename a folder in program files and move it somewhere else or ... I din't quite catch your meaning ... please, do explain. – ldigas Oct 15 '09 at 16:58
exactly, take a folder, rename it and most software will work. thats the reason why portableapps.com can take the software and 'repack' it. – akira Oct 15 '09 at 18:03
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