Not reading ~/.vimrc

Question

I have a ~/.vimrc file that vim doesn\'t seem to be reading. There is a file at /etc/vimrc, and it looks like it is using that one.

My understanding is that the one

Answer 1

For me, the mistake was I had the configuration set at ~/.vim/.vimrc. After reading some documentation, I found that right path is ~/.vim/vimrc.

Changing the file did the trick.

Answer 2

Once you've loaded vim, :scriptnames will tell you exactly what Vim read.

For me, it starts like this:

  1: /Applications/MacVim.app/Contents/Resources/vim/vimrc
  2: ~/.vimrc
  3: /Applications/MacVim.app/Contents/Resources/vim/runtime/syntax/syntax.vim
  4: /Applications/MacVim.app/Contents/Resources/vim/runtime/syntax/synload.vim
  5: /Applications/MacVim.app/Contents/Resources/vim/runtime/syntax/syncolor.vim

IF you want to check where a particular setting is being set, use "verbose set". For example, :verbose set background tells me:

  background=light
        Last set from ~/.vimrc

so I know that my setting in ~/.vimrc is being read, and that none of the later files is clobbering it.

Answer 3

I had this problem and just added the following to the file ~/.bash_profile:

alias vim="vim -S ~/.vimrc"

Answer 4

On OSX 10.8.0 the location of the vimrc file is: /usr/share/vim/vimrc

I just add my changes to the bottom of the file.

Of course this has the effect of making the changes for all users. For the life of me I can't seem to figure out how to get it to read ~/.vimrc. This was never an issue for me on 10.6.x

Anyway this is a quick fix even it is a bit dirty.

Cheers

Answer 5

Check if $VIMINIT has been set. It may prevent reading your ~/.vimrc. See :help VIMINIT:

 c. Four places are searched for initializations.  The first that exists
    is used, the others are ignored.  [...]
    -  The environment variable VIMINIT [...]

For me unsetting VIMINIT did the trick, my ~/.vimrc is now read.

Answer 6

After checking scriptnames and verbose as suggested above, I noticed that my setting was indeed being loaded, but being overridden by another plugin, thus giving the impression that it was not reading/loading the .vimrc.

If this happens to you and you want to override a specific setting from a plugin, without completely eliminating all the other good things that come from that plugin, you can create a config file to load after the plugin is loaded, by creating a file in ~/.vim/after/<path>/<plugin_name>. For reference, see this other question.