How to upgrade vim to version 8 on CentOS 7?

vim on CentOS 7 is version 7.4 with patches 1-160:

$ vim --version
VIM - Vi IMproved 7.4 (2013 Aug 10, compiled Dec 21 2016 17:00:20)
Included patches: 1-160

How to upgrade it to version 8 which is the latest major version?

Update on Oct 23 2018: the repository introduced in the original method is not available any more, you should not follow the method any more.

Check other packages, such as this one https://centos.pkgs.org/7/ghettoforge-plus-x86_64/vim-enhanced-8.0.003-1.gf.el7.x86_64.rpm.html .

Or compile Vim by yourself. Checkout the source code at https://github.com/vim/vim by

git clone https://github.com/vim/vim

and build and install it by

1. make # to run configure, compile and link
2. make install # to do installation in /usr/local

---

You may use this CentOS 7 repository on Fedora Copr for Vim 8 builds.

By these commands on CentOS 7.

Add this repository:

# curl -L https://copr.fedorainfracloud.org/coprs/mcepl/vim8/repo/epel-7/mcepl-vim8-epel-7.repo -o /etc/yum.repos.d/mcepl-vim8-epel-7.repo

Upgrade Vim to vim 8:

# yum update vim*

After it is successful, your Vim should be version 8.0 now:

# vim --version
VIM - Vi IMproved 8.0 (2016 Sep 12, compiled Aug  2 2017 16:29:21)
Included patches: 1-839