Vim Classic 8.3 released

Version 8.3 of Vim Classic has been released. This is the first release of the Vim fork since the project was announced in March.

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.

LWN covered Vim Classic and another Vim fork, EVi, in April.