On my laptop with Ubuntu I'm able to have just one instance of vim, launched withvim --servername VIMAfter this I'm able to open files from console withvim --remote-silent filenameI use short aliases for both of them.Also I do some computation on another computer (I'll call it workhorse). It has Debian x64 (without gui) installed. I usually access it using multiple instances of Putty from a Windows PC. Actually workhorse is a virtual machine and I pay for resource usage, so I don't want to overload it too much. However after usual installation of vim (apt-get install vim) I'm unable to run vim with --servername option. It saysUnknown option argument: --servernameMore info with: vim -hIndeed, documentation says that vim should be compiled with +client-server option to run it as a command server. I know two other options: apt-get install vim-gtk and apt-get install vim-gnome, but they ask for huge installation (136Mb and 245Mb respectively). As far as I understand this is somehow related with installation of graphical interface.I don't have any preferences for any particular workaround. Probably, I will be happy with any workable solution. But I do want to load files to vim from console, like I'm doing it from Ubuntu, or otherwise I do want to know any other way to effectively use vim for editing multiple files. So the question remainsHow to install light-weight vim and to be able to efficiently load files into one instance vim?
How to install light-weight vim and to be able to efficiently load files into one instance vim?
command line;vim;editors;console;efficiency
The client-server capabilities of vim depend on X11, citing from its help:The communication between client and server goes through the X server.  The  display of the Vim server must be specified.  The usual protection of the X  server is used, you must be able to open a window on the X server for the  communication to work.  [...]A non GUI Vim with access to the X11 display (xterm-clipboard enabled), can  also act as a command server if a server name is explicitly given with the  --servername argument.This mailing list post is clearer on what is needed:Except on Windows, communication between server and client goes  through X11, so in that case you need both the --with-x configuration  option (or default) at compile-time (which, in turn, requires one or  more X11 development packages to be installed) and an available X  server at run-time.Thus, if you're concerned with resources on your workhorse, it might be better to just fire up vim instances when needed.Edit: You could get away with less than gvim by building vim yourself (e.g. by rebuilding the Debian package (packaging tutorial PDF)) such that while still needing X11, you could do without GTK etc.