Using Vim with Neocomplete on Ubuntu 14.04

Neocomplete is an auto completion plugin for vim. However, it requires lua, which is not supported by vim default. You can easily install Vim by opening “Ubuntu Software Center”, then search for Gvim, then click install. Here is a guide to compile Vim with lua support from source. It was originally written by Valloric, the author of YouCompleteMe. The reason why I don’t use YouCompleteMe is that I have never built it successfully :-(

1. Install prerequisite libraries:

    sudo apt-get install libncurses5-dev libgnome2-dev libgnomeui-dev \
        libgtk2.0-dev libatk1.0-dev libbonoboui2-dev \
        libcairo2-dev libx11-dev libxpm-dev libxt-dev python-dev \
        ruby-dev mercurial
   

2. Remove original Vim:

    sudo apt-get remove vim vim-runtime gvim
   

3. Install lua:

    sudo apt-get install liblua5.2-dev lua5.2
   

4. Compile Vim74 from source:

    wget ftp://ftp.vim.org/pub/vim/unix/vim-7.4.tar.bz2
    tar xvf vim-7.4.tar.bz2
    cd vim74
    ./configure --with-features=huge \
            --enable-multibyte \
            --enable-rubyinterp \
            --enable-pythoninterp \
            --with-python-config-dir=/usr/lib/python2.7/config \
            --enable-perlinterp \
            --enable-luainterp \
            --enable-gui=gtk2 --enable-cscope --prefix=/usr
   

   set Vim RUNTIMEDIR:

    make VIMRUNTIMEDIR=/usr/share/vim/vim74
   

   Finish install using sudo make install. To make it easier when uninstall, use sudo checkinstall instead.

5. Set Vim as default editor:

    sudo update-alternatives --install /usr/bin/editor editor /usr/bin/vim 1
    sudo update-alternatives --set editor /usr/bin/vim
    sudo update-alternatives --install /usr/bin/vi vi /usr/bin/vim 1
    sudo update-alternatives --set vi /usr/bin/vim
   

6. Check installation by typing vim --version in shell or :echo has("lua") in vim.

Here are some common settings:

nmap <F3> :NeoCompleteToggle<CR>                    "toggle plugin using F3
let g:neocomplete#enable_at_startup = 1             "start automatically
let g:neocomplete#disable_auto_complete = 0         "auto completion
let g:neocomplete#auto_completion_start_length = 3  "do completion after input 3 keys

More info can be found by :help neocomplete.
Here is my vimrc file.

Ref: Building Vim from source