[2026-06-02] I'm proud to announce the release of the first version of Vim Classic, Vim Classic 8.3.0, a stable, long-term support fork of the ubiquitous text editor, maintained without the assistance of generative AI tools.
For more information about the motivations for this fork, please read
this blog post. This release is based on Vim 8.2.0148, with a number of bug fixes and patches conservatively backported from future versions of Vim upstream. We elected to clean up this version of Vim, prepare it for a release, and imagine an alternate history where Vim 8.3 was released without Vim9 script. The result is Vim Classic 8.3. We chose to take this approach in order to reduce the long-term maintenance burden of Vim Classic, acknowledging that our fork lacks the resources and institutional knowledge available to Vim upstream. However, a consequence is that there are some Vim plugins which are not compatible with Vim Classic.
We have made a special effort to assess patches from Vim upstream which mitigate some of the many CVEs affecting Vim which were discovered and fixed between versions 8.2 and modern-day Vim, but we can't be sure we've got all of the security patches which are applicable to Vim Classic (and practically exploitable). This version of Vim Classic is therefore recommended for early adopters who are comfortable adopting a security posture which accounts for the fact that we may have overlooked some bugs.
We have not evaluated all of the many thousands of patches to land in Vim since version 8.2.0148, so your favorite bug from the last few years might make a reappearance when you install Vim Classic. Your patience and especially your assistance in identifying and backporting the applicable bug fixes for your use-cases is appreciated.
Vim Classic is charityware, much like Vim, and we are happy to continue supporting Bram's passion of providing for children in need in Uganda. Switching from Vim to Vim Classic would be an opportune moment for you to
make a donation! You can download Vim Classic from SourceHut:
- .tar.gz
- .tar.gz.sig
vim-classic-v8.3.0.tar.gz.sig This release is signed with my PGP public key. Please subscribe to vim-classic-announce to be notified of important (actionable) news and releases in the future. Last, but not least, let me extend a big "thanks!" to everyone who jumped in to enthusiastically test Vim Classic, provide feedback, and contribute many patches and backports to get this release done.
Happy editing!
— Drew DeVault