/vim-history

Very very old history of Vim (from v1.14 to v6.4)

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Vim-history

This repository contains the old source code of Vim. It basically consists of two parts:

Initially those two parts were two separate repositories. However they have been merged into a single repository using

git replace --graft 686757e4d2a46c8ab55c08c7a0ccd v5.5
git filter-branch v5.5..HEAD

Some tags were updated manually.

Release History

The following table summarizes the previous release dates according to several sources.

Data has been taken from the

  • Vim FAQ
  • a youtube video of Brams presentation on Vim (1:37)
  • Wikipedia article on Vim
  • Announcements in the mailinglist vim-announce(Note: Yahoo decided to shut down the Yahoo Groups archive on December 15th, 2020. But, the list may still contain (now some) invalid deep-links, that are not available in other archives :( )
  • Announcements in the comp.editors news group
  • Date of the release tags in the CVS repository (now available in the vim-ancient repository)
  • Date of the release tag in the current Vim repository
  • Source code (the date written in src/version.h or src/version.c) E.g. 
    $ git show v8.1.0000:src/version.h | grep '#define VIM_VERSION_LONG\>'
$ git show v4.6:src/version.c | grep '\*longVersion'
Version vim-faq video Wikipedia Announcements,
comp.editors		 Tags current,
Tags old		 Source code
9.1 2nd January, 2024 Jan 02 Jan 02 Jan 02 Jan 02
9.0 28th June, 2022 Jun 28 Jun 28 Jun 28 Jun 28
8.2 12th December, 2019 Dec 13 Dec 12 Dec 12 Dec 12
8.1 17th May, 2018 May 18 May 17 May 17 May 17
8.0 12th September, 2016 Sep 12 Sep 12 Sep 12 Sep 12 Sep 12
7.4 10th August, 2013 Aug 10 Aug 10 Aug 10 Aug 10
7.3 15th August, 2010 Aug 15 Aug 15 Aug 15 Aug 15
7.2 9th August, 2008 Aug 9 Aug 9 Aug 9 Aug 9
7.1 12th May, 2007 May 12 May 12 May 12 May 12
7.0 8th May, 2006 May 8 May 7 May 8 May 7 May 7
6.4 15th October, 2005 Oct 15 Oct 15 Oct 15 Oct 15
6.3 8th June 2004 June 7 June 8 June 8 June 7
6.2 1st June 2003 June 1 June 1 June 2 Jun 1
6.1 24th March 2002 Mar 24 Mar 24 Mar 25 Mar 24
6.0 27th September, 2001 Sep 27 Sep 26 Sep 27 Sep 27 Sep 26
5.8 31st May, 2001 May 31 May 31 June 5 May 31
5.7 24th June, 2000 June 24 June 24 June 24 Jun 24
5.6 16th January, 2000 Jan 16 Jan 16 Jan 17 Jan 16
5.5 21st September, 1999 Sep 19 Sep 21 Sep 19
5.4 26th July, 1999 July 25 July 26 Jul 25
5.3 31st August, 1998 Aug 31 Aug 31 Aug 30
5.2 24th August, 1998 Apr 27 [1] Aug 24 Aug 23
5.1 7th April, 1998 Apr 6 Apr 7 Apr 7
5.0 19th February, 1998 Feb 28 Feb 19 Feb 19 Feb 19
4.6 13th March, 1997 Mar 13 Mar 13
4.5 17th October, 1996 Oct 17 Oct 12
4.2 5th July, 1996 Jun 21 June 17
4.0 21st May, 1996 May 29 May 29 May 29
3.0 16th August, 1994 Aug 12 Aug 12 Sep 7 [2] Aug 12
2.0 21st December, 1993 Dec 21 Dec 14 Dec 31 [2] Dec 14
1.27 23rd April, 1993 Apr 23 April 6
1.24 5 Jan 1993
1.17 21st April, 1992
1.14 2nd November, 1991 Nov 2

[1]: I think it is an error in the wikipedia page and very unlikely, that Vim 5.2 was released just 20 days after 5.1
[2]: Announced by Darren Hiebert

Merge the whole history

If you want to see the whole history of Vim in your one local repository, try this:

git clone https://github.com/vim/vim.git
cd vim
git remote add vim-history https://github.com/vim/vim-history.git
git fetch vim-history --tags
git replace --graft v7.0001 vim-6-3-004

This virtually connects the tag v7.0001 on top of the tag vim-6-3-004. The development of Vim 7.0 was branched from around Vim 6.3.

Other repositories

  • vim-ancient
    This includes the history from v5.5 to v6.4.
    This was converted from the old CVS repository at sourceforge.

  • official repository
    This includes the history from v7.0 to the latest release.