vim - Not reading ~/.vimrc

Question

I have a ~/.vimrc file that vim doesn't seem to be reading. There is a file at /etc/vimrc, and it looks like it is using that one.

My understanding is that the one in the home directory should override this one, shouldn't it?

Update

cat vim_strace | grep .vimrc
    stat64("/etc/vimrc", {st_mode=S_IFREG|0644, st_size=1438, ...}) = 0
    open("/etc/vimrc", O_RDONLY|O_LARGEFILE) = 3
    stat64("/etc/vimrc", {st_mode=S_IFREG|0644, st_size=1438, ...}) = 0
    stat64("/root/.vimrc", {st_mode=S_IFREG|0644, st_size=35, ...}) = 0
    open("/root/.vimrc", O_RDONLY|O_LARGEFILE) = 3
    stat64("/root/.vimrc", {st_mode=S_IFREG|0644, st_size=35, ...}) = 0

Answer 1

Once you've loaded vim, :scriptnames will tell you exactly what Vim read.

For me, it starts like this:

  1: /Applications/MacVim.app/Contents/Resources/vim/vimrc
  2: ~/.vimrc
  3: /Applications/MacVim.app/Contents/Resources/vim/runtime/syntax/syntax.vim
  4: /Applications/MacVim.app/Contents/Resources/vim/runtime/syntax/synload.vim
  5: /Applications/MacVim.app/Contents/Resources/vim/runtime/syntax/syncolor.vim

IF you want to check where a particular setting is being set, use "verbose set". For example, :verbose set background tells me:

  background=light
        Last set from ~/.vimrc

so I know that my setting in ~/.vimrc is being read, and that none of the later files is clobbering it.