Why do I need both a vimrc and a gvimrc?

Question

There seems to be two ways to store preferences specific to gvim:

1. Keep an .vimrc file for vim and a .gvimrc file for gvim specific additions.

2. Keep all settings in .vimrc and wrap gvim specific settings in a feature detection conditional:

   if has('gui_running')
       " gvim specific settings here
   endif
   

Given the existence of the latter option, why would I ever need a .gvimrc file?

Answer 1

When the GUI starts, some settings are reset and then .gvimrc is processed.

Consequently, if you want a non-default value for any of those settings, you'll need to set it in a .gvimrc; testing for GUI mode in .vimrc won't work.

One such setting is t_vb, the terminal code used for the visual bell; in fact, all terminal optionals are reset to defaults for GUI mode (see :help terminal-options).

Additionally a bunch of GUI setup and menu customization is carried out; if you want to tweak any of that, you'll want that in a .gvimrc or it may not have any impact.

Reading over :help gvimrc provides a good overview of things that may change on you between the sourcing of your .vimrc and .gvimrc that you may want to consider re-adjusting in the latter.