# Debian Packaging Policy for Vim

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Debian VIM Maintainers

`<team+vim@tracker.debian.org>`

Version 2.0

Copyright © 2007, 2008 Stefano Zacchiroli

Copyright © 2021 James McCoy

# 1. Vim Addon Packaging in a Nutshell

| This section contains a brief howto of what to do to package a Vim addon (plugin, syntax definition, ...) in Debian. This section is not the full policy nor the guidelines for doing that; have a look at the remainder of this document for such information.

So you've found on vim.org a cool extra feature for your beloved editor (Vim) and you want it to be packaged in Debian. It's as easy as implementing the following 4 steps:

1. create an architecture: all `.deb` binary package called vim-`ADDON`, where `ADDON` is the addon name. See Section 3.2 for more info on this.

2. make your package ship all the files composing your addon (usually `.vim` and `.txt` files) under `/usr/share/vim-`ADDON`/`. The files should be shipped as a file and directory tree isomorphic to what you want to see in a runtime Vim directory. So if for example the addon documentation says that something should be installed as `plugin/foo.vim` then you should ship it as `/usr/share/vim-`ADDON`/plugin/foo.vim`. See Section 3.1 for more info on this.

3. create a `debian/vim-`ADDON`.vim-addon` specifying the files and/or directories making up the addon. If neovim is also supported, create a corresponding `debian/vim-`ADDON`.neovim-addon` for it, or a symlink if the same set of files are used. See the dh_vim-addon manual page, in the dh-vim-addon package, for more details.

4. add Depends: ${vim-addon:Depends} to the binary package stanzas.

That's it! Easy, isn't it?

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