patch 9.1.1857 (Missing clipboard provider support) appears to break backward compatibility

[peterwu]

Steps to reproduce

On macOS (26.0.1), I built from the master branch (containing patch 9.1.1857) with the default.

make
make install

I can confirm the +clipboard and +clipboard_provider features are included.

With all defaults (an empty vimrc), if I do :registers, I don't see the * or + register and am given a W23 error if attempting to use either register.

• :echo v:clipmethod shows none;
• :set clipmethod shows gui,other

Previously, patch 9.1.1856 or earlier, if I followed the same build instruction, I could see the * register and was able to use "*y and "*p to access the clipboard.

With patch 9.1.1857, I can use the * register as before, if I explicitly disable-clipboard-provider when building:

./configure --disable-clipboard-provider

On my Linux box running Fedora 42, I tried the same thing but with wayland support.

./configure --with-features=normal --with-wayland --enable-terminal

I can confirm that +clipboard, +clipboard_provider, +wayland, +wayland_clipboard and +wayland_focus_steal are all included. I even installed wl-copy and wl-paste in case they're needed.

With all defaults (an empty vimrc), if I do :registers, I don't see the * or + register and am given a W23 error if attempting to use either register.

• :echo v:clipmethod shows none;
• :set clipmethod shows wayland, x11,gui,other

Please correct me if I'm mistaken but it seems to me that patch 9.1.1857 at least breaks the default behaviour as of patch 9.1.1856 on macOS.

Expected behaviour

The introduction of clipboard_provider should be backward compatible.

Version of Vim

9.1.1857

Environment

OS: macOS 26.0.1 / Fedora Linux 42
Shell: bash 5.2.37
Terminal: doesn't seem to matter as this behaviour can always be reproduced. Terminals tested:
macOS stock Terminal app, ghostty, kitty, foot.

Logs and stack traces

[64-bitman]

Sorry for the delay I am busy with university, I will fix this soon

[64-bitman]

Honestly I'm considering on changing how this clipboard provider works. It is just a complicated mess to handle the #ifdef macros. I am considering on creating a new register (maybe $?) and separating it from the clipboard code/clipmethod. Does anyone have any objections to this?

EDIT: Actually the clipboard provide code can be separated from the clipboard code, and make the +* registers be available if the feature is enabled. This sounds better

[ychin]

I agree that the current setup is messy and I have some opinions on how it should be refactored as well, but for now I think we should simply revert the change completely, as I suggested in #17998 (comment).

Please keep in mind that the Vim master branch is used by a lot of people. People should be able to expect that they can pull master and build and things work. Vim also doesn't have a release vs dev branch, so master branch is the release branch. Package managers also directly pull from Vim master and unfixed breakages like this will eventually make their way to much more people who just ran a package manager update.

When I advocate for revert, it's not a knock on you. It's to address the situation as quickly as possible to unblock everyone else (including me, who cannot ship MacVim downstream because this behavior is too broken to be considered for release). This gives you more time to properly think about how to fix it rather than having to do a hack job under time pressure which helps no one.