Bring GVIM menu back in Ubuntu 11.10

GVIM menu bar disappeared in Ubuntu 11.10 with Unity if gvim is launched from command line. This post is a compilation of things that I tried to fix the issue.

First, you might need to remove Vim from the .gnome2 dir:

rm ~/.gnome2/Vim

Then, add the following line to ~/.bashrc

alias gvi='gvim -f'

Restart terminal. Type gvi, and you should see the gvim with menu in the unity top bar. People report that the "-f" should fix the menu problem.

If you don't want to block a terminal when opening gvim, replace the above alias line with this:

gvi() {
  gvim -f $@ &
}

Next time, when you type gvi, the gvim process will be put in background.

If you want to keep gvim running even after its terminal is closed, try this:

gvi() {
  gvim -f $@ &
  disown
}

References:

• gvim gets no global menu, timeout warning on the console
• Updated Ubuntu 11.04 from 10.x and vim's menu bar disappeared
• Linux tip: Bash parameters and parameter expansions
• How do I start a command from terminal so that terminal is not the parent?