.vimrc is not properly loaded when running sudoedit or sudo -e vim

Question

I have a very strange issue. I am running vim on my Centos 7 box and having issues getting it to load my .vimrc when I run sudoedit or ssh -e vim.

When I run sudoedit I end up with a few of my settings carrying over but none of my custom colors or any of my key mappings transfer over.

I do see line numbers and I think my indentation settings are working, but not much else.

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Here you can see what it looks like normally:

Here is what it looks like when using sudoedit:

I included my :version output just to show it's not calling vi or some other version of the editor, and it clearly shows that both are calling the same .vimrc file. It's just that one is actually reading it and the other isn't...

Answer 1

When calling sudoedit or sudo -e, sudo will start the editor defined by the environment variables SUDO_EDITOR, VISUAL and EDITOR (in that order) or will typically fall back to vi.

In your screenshots, you can see that two different versions of Vim are called. vim calls a "Huge version without gui", while sudoedit calls a "Small version without gui". Most likely the "Small version..." is called when you invoke vi. The small version does not include syntax highlighting. See :help +feature-list.

By setting EDITOR=vim you tell sudo, that it should start vim. Hence you get the full feature set.

Whether vi and vim starts different executables is installation dependent. On my machine they both start the same version of Vim.