Vim 9.2 released
33 points by ehamberg
33 points by ehamberg
Vim now adheres to the XDG Base Directory Specification, using $HOME/.config/vim for user configuration.
If even the oldest tool, Vim, can do it… you can too!
When I start using a new tool, I usually end up on the XDG Base Directory page on the Arch Wiki. It’s a fantastic resource for anyone interested in cajoling their tools (or the tools’ maintainers) into using the XDG directories.
(If you follow the many, many links to bug tickets on that page, you will find that a disturbing number of maintainers seem to simultaneously believe that (1) “I’m a good enough programmer that it isn’t a problem for me to write C,” and (2) “having my application check a single extra location for its config file is so fraught and so bug-prone that it’s an unacceptable risk” 😐)
In case anyone else was similarly curious, the final outcome is $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/vim/vimrc citation. I was wondering if it was .../vim/.vimrc or (thankfully not!) [[ -f $HOME/.config/vim ]] since it wasn't clear from that short snippet. Their seemingly official "help files online" sidebar link is stale, but I guess in their defense it does say "An up-to-date version of the help" right next to the vimhelp link
The maturity of Vim9 script's modern constructs is now being leveraged by advanced AI development tools.
Fuck this shit, I'm switching to ed.
Were the entire release notes AI-generated? Random words are emboldened without rhyme and reason ("The MS-Windows GUI now supports native dark mode for the menu and title bars"). The hero image has that AI-generated look you see on every vibecoded site (also, just look at the source).
The worst tell might be the "Charity: Transition to Kuwasha" section. Bram cared so much about ICCF Holland, and now that he's dead and it has dissolved - you couldn't even get any human on the team to write something about it? Is that how little you care? That's just fucking disrespectful.
The worst tell might be the "Charity: Transition to Kuwasha" section. Bram cared so much about ICCF Holland, and now that he's dead and it has dissolved - you couldn't even get any human on the team to write something about it?
i was disappointed about that too, so i looked at the homepage. there was an earlier 'news' post about it: https://www.vim.org/news/news.php#:~:text=An%20Update%20from%20the%20ICCF%20charity (i don't see a way to link to it directly)
I'm more confused about why this is in the release notes. Obviously LLMs can write all kinds of programs in all kinds of languages now, and every programmer who's not been living under a rock in the past 2-3 years know this. I'm not quite sure what this section is supposed to communicate to the readers and why it's there. It doesn't look like they've added anything specific for LLMs.
This post provides some context:
The goal was to see if the AI could correctly implement Vim9’s newer OOP-style features.
It's a legitimate question to ask whether a language that is underrepresented in a model's training data can be generated correctly (and in the case of Vim, the bias towards legacy Vim script is pretty strong). Maybe that shouldn't be in the release notes because it's not strictly a Vim feature. To me, it fits because it's showcasing one of the main features of 9.2, namely improved scripting language, and it's doing it in the tradition of Killer Sheep.
Really glad to see vim continued to be maintained given it's a default install in many distros! I thought they were in maintenance mode and only fixing bugs / security, but looks like there are some new features as well.