This is a mirror of http://www.vim.org/scripts/script.php?script_id=1502

                                        [VIM VERSION 7.1 or 7.2 REQUIRED]

The vimball plugin facilitates creating, extracting , and listing the contents of "vimball" archives (*.vba). Vimball also records the files extracted with it and can remove them.

CREATING A VIMBALL

Vimball can create a "vimball" archive (*.vba) with the following command:

:[range]MkVimball[!] filename

As an example:

plugin/something.vim
doc/something.txt
:%MkVimball something

will create a "vimball.vba" archive. Each line in the range processed by the MkVimball command simply describes where in the usual vim directory tree various files are. I am now also providing a C source program that creates vimballs; see http://mysite.verizon.net/astronaut/src/index.html#MKVIMBALL .

EXTRACTING FROM A VIMBALL

Users of a vimball archive simply need to

:vim something.vba
:so %

and the contents of the vimball will be extracted and placed into the proper directories, no matter where the user opened up the vimball. Furthermore, the helptags command will be automatically and transparently used to make any doc/*.txt files' contents available by the Vim help system.

PREVIEWING A VIMBALL

Instead of immediately sourcing a vimball to extract its contents, one may use

:VimballList

to preview the contents of the vimball archive.

(alpha/beta version available at http://mysite.verizon.net/astronaut/vim/index.html#VIMBALL)