This package requires its patch to be applied before you can install it. Make sure it's unpacked before running the installation commands. If you not wish to install Vim, build instructions for alternative editors are available at . Currently, there are instructions for Emacs, nano, and joe. Install Vim by running the following commands: patch -Np1 -i ../vim-&vim-patch-version;.patch && ./configure --prefix=/usr && make CPPFLAGS=-DSYS_VIMRC_FILE=\\\"/etc/vimrc\\\" && make install && ln -s vim /usr/bin/vi If you plan to install the X Window system on your LFS system, you might want to re-compile Vim after you have installed X. Vim comes with a nice GUI version of the editor which requires X and a few other libraries to be installed. For more information read the Vim documentation. The FHS says that editors like vim should use /var/lib/<editor> for their temporary state files, like temporary save files for example. If you wish vim to conform to the FHS, you should use this command set instead of the one presented above: patch -Np1 -i ../vim-&vim-patch-version;.patch && ./configure --prefix=/usr --localstatedir=/var/lib/vim && make CPPFLAGS=-DSYS_VIMRC_FILE=\\\"/etc/vimrc\\\" && make install && ln -s vim /usr/bin/vi