Updated May 07, 2009 by George.V.Reilly
Labels:	Featured

Win64Binaries

Installing Vim Binaries on Win64

Introduction

I have ported Vim to run natively on Win64, the 64-bit flavor of Windows. The Win32 vim.exe and gvim.exe have always run on Win64, but things like the "Edit with Vim" shell extension didn't work.

There is no nice installer for the Win64 binaries yet.

The 7.2 build of Vim supports the Python interface. You must install the Win64 build of Python 2.5.2 to use it.

Installation

To install Vim, first download vim72.zip. This 18MB file contains all the files you need for a full installation, including the latest Vim runtime.

Unzip the zipfile into a directory whose name ends in vim, such as C:\Program Files\Vim, D:\vim, or C:\mytools\vim. This will create a vim72 subdirectory, containing all the files. Start a cmd.exe window, cd ...\vim\vim72, then run install.exe, the command-line installer. This will offer you a series of choices. You can probably just type d to "do it".`

On Vista and Windows 7, you must run the cmd window as an Administrator. (Most users run as administrators on earlier versions of Windows.)

In Windows Explorer, go to c:\windows\system32, select cmd.exe, and right-click. Choose Run as Administrator.

In the new Administrator cmd window, cd to the directory where you unzipped the Vim binaries and run install.exe. You should now be able to successfully create the batch files and register "Edit with Vim".

To uninstall, use uninstall.exe in the same directory.

Note: The message translations (:help win32-gettext) do not yet work, because I have not been able to locate a Win64 version of libintl.dll.

Comment by haysoos.gnomeboy, Oct 12, 2008

very helpful, and valid links

Comment by Dave.Kurtzberg, Oct 25, 2008

My right click - edit with vim is back! Thanks!

Comment by wanghao0000, Oct 26, 2008

The "Edit with Vim" is working correctly. Thanks!

Comment by mjujou, Nov 16, 2008

cool thanks :) i love my vim.

Comment by fuzzyeric, Nov 16, 2008

Vim is my favorite editor on my XP x64 box. Thanks for the help getting it to work better there.

GTK+ uses proxy-libintl for x64 Windows targets. http://www.gtk.org/download-windows-64bit.html

There's also wrapping 32-bit DLLs with a 32-bit app and then bouncing calls through the app. http://dnjonline.com/article.aspx?ID=jun07_access3264

These may be more trouble than you're wanting to take on, though...

I could also try building libintl for an x64 target, but I don't think I have any way to test that whatever I build does anything useful. Any ideas?

Comment by david.k.lam1, Nov 22, 2008

woot this worked great for me on 64bit vista... just had to replace the install.exe in the existing vim folder with the one here...

Comment by colby.digital, Dec 03, 2008

The download is really having problems for me. I'll keep trying, but it's timed out after 8mb several times now.

Comment by dancallen, Dec 05, 2008

Thanks a lot! I'm really happy now that I have VIM back on Vista. Thanks.

Comment by carter.terry, Dec 18, 2008

Thank you so much! "Edit with Vim" is such a time saver - thanks again!!

Comment by vincent.cheesbrough, Dec 26, 2008

Thanks, I can have a proper editor on vista64 now )

Comment by gantt.erick, Jan 12, 2009

Sweet. Thanks.

Comment by sndrdg, Jan 14, 2009

Thanks for taking the time to port this over.

Comment by fbmoser, Jan 20, 2009

All works fine on Vista 64. The "Edit with Vim" now appears! Wonderful! Thank you for all.

Comment by licholai, Jan 29, 2009

All seems to work fine on Win7 Beta as well. Thanks!

Comment by seanrules, Feb 18, 2009

This line in my vimrc crashes gvim on x64 vista:

set rulerformat=%55(%{strftime('%a\ %b\ %e\ %I:%M\ %p')}\ %5l,%-6(%c%V%)\ %P%)

Anyone know why?

Comment by former33t, Mar 08, 2009

Awesome job. I hadn't thought about not being able to inject a 32bit DLL into a 64 bit explorer, but it makes sense. I do know that not having the context menu was driving my nuts on my vista x64 box.

Comment by pywpeng, Mar 27, 2009

Does anyone notice that File -> Print does not work? When I click File -> Print, the command line first quickly shows "Printing page xx (xx%)". Then it shows "Print job sent". However, nothing happens on my default printer. I went to the printers folder and none of them shows any printing jobs. If you don't experience this problem, I will try to reinstall Gvim for Win64bit. Thanks

Comment by Andrew.Gause, Apr 08, 2009

Thanks big-time. I need vim on everything!

Comment by jackchoy, Apr 20, 2009

I also am experiencing the same problem regarding print. gvim for 64-bit does not print

Comment by Jonathon.Padfield, Apr 28, 2009

'Edit with Vim' now works perfectly. Thanks.

Comment by farrellj, May 05, 2009

"Edit with Vim" also working in Windows 7 RC x64. Hopefully these manual install steps won't be necessary a year from now, as 64bit (at least for Windows) becomes more mainstream on desktops. Thanks.

Comment by MobyGamer, May 23, 2009

Thank you so much for doing this; it takes some of the pain out of Vista.

Comment by clubstew, Jun 18, 2009

I'm not sure why (g)vim has to run natively on 64-bit windows. Really all we need is the 64-bit extension DLL. Would it be more beneficial to port that to the curent vim source?

Comment by shreeju, Jun 29 (6 days ago)

Thanks! This works!

Comment by xenofears, Jun 30 (5 days ago)

I have 64-bit libintl, gettext, iconv. xenofears@gmail.com.

Comment by s.jeanneret, Jul 03 (3 days ago)

Perfect! Thanks a lot