Ubuntu 16.04 LTS - Can't enable xterm_clipboard in VIM - linux

Question

I use VIM a lot, and have previously been able to get +xterm_clipboard support working by using a script provided in a separate post on StackOverflow. I've re-installed Ubuntu on my machine, and have since migrated from Ubuntu 14.04.4 LTS (Wily) to Ubuntu 16.04 LTS (Xenial).
# Get the compile-dependencies of vim
sudo apt-get build-dep vim
# If you haven't got mercurial, get it
sudo apt-get install mercurial
# Get the source
hg clone https://vim.googlecode.com/hg/ vim_source
# Compile it
cd vim_source
./configure \
--enable-perlinterp=dynamic \
--enable-pythoninterp=dynamic \
--enable-rubyinterp=dynamic \
--enable-cscope \
--enable-gui=auto \
--enable-gtk2-check \
--enable-gnome-check \
--with-features=huge \
--with-x \
--with-compiledby="Your Name <youremail#domain.com>" \
--with-python-config-dir=/usr/lib/python2.7/config
make && sudo make install
However, this no longer works, and I can't make use of ",+,y to yank buffers to the system clipboard. I don't see anything obvious in the .configure output, but vim --version always shows -xterm_clipboard when I build it. How do I fix this?

Answer 1

You should have noticed that the source is no longer hosted on Google code via mercurial (hg) anymore, and has migrated to GitHub in the error messages generated by the provided script.
You'll need to use the new source tree, git, and some developer libraries will need to be installed in advance.
Code Listing (Updated for Ubuntu 18.04 and onward)
# Get the compile-dependencies of vim
sudo apt-get -y build-dep vim
# Install the "checkinstall" tool so the "make install" step is
# wrapped and the result is a .deb file that can be removed later by
# your package manager rather than having to hunt down every file deployed
# by "make install", which might not be possible if it overwrites existing
# system files.
sudo apt-get -y install checkinstall
# Install python dev
sudo apt-get -y install python3-dev
# Install xorg dev
sudo apt-get -y install xorg-dev
# Install git
sudo apt-get -y install git
# Get the source
git clone https://github.com/vim/vim.git vim_source
# Remove ./configure cache in case we have to run this twice due to permissions
# related issues.
rm vim_source/src/auto/config.cache
# Compile it
cd vim_source
make clean distclean
./configure \
--enable-perlinterp=yes \
--enable-python3interp=yes \
--enable-rubyinterp=yes \
--with-python3-command=python3.6 \
--with-python3-config-dir=$(python3.6-config --configdir) \
--enable-cscope \
--enable-gui=auto \
--enable-gtk2-check \
--enable-gnome-check \
--with-features=huge \
--with-x \
--with-compiledby="DevNull <darkstar#/dev/null>"
# Build quickly (parallel jobs).
make -j$(nproc)
# Need root to install
sudo checkinstall