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