Vim 7.2 hangs on startup, "killall vim" fixes it

Question

I just compiled vim 7.2 on a Linux server (in my user dir, since the server had vim 6 installed and I wanted to upgrade but do not have root privileges).

When I enter "vim", it hangs on startup without any response, but when I call "killall vim" from another ssh window, startup completes and vim seems to work fine after that. Why would that be, and how can I fix it?

Many thanks for your responses.

Answer 1

strace vim will probably tell you what's hanging it.

Answer 2

Well, I found the answer:

:help -X

shows that Vim tries to connect to the X11 server on startup to get clipboard functionality and other stuff, which can lead to a "long startup time when running Vim in a terminal emulator and the connection to the X server is slow"

There are three ways to resolve this issue:

1. Starting Vim with "vim -X" disables this X11 communication
2. Calling "unset DISPLAY" also disables the X11 communication
3. If Vim is compiled without the "+X11" feature, this communication will not take place

I went for "unset DISPLAY" since I've been getting other strange error messages, and now vim starts all but instantly. I also tested the -X parameter, which resolved the problem as well (even with the DISPLAY parameter still set).