This is the dependency graph for vim in Debian. For the decent version of vim.
Why X? Why GNOME? Why Xinerama? Don't answer, please. Sharing the clipboard of the CLI vim with X is not a good answer.
You can get the dependency graph for any Debian package here
The decent version of Vim is "vim", not "vimfull".
"vimfull" is, instead, the version of vim compiled with pretty much every little library that Vim could use to be slightly better. I'd say it's reasonable that this version would depend on things like X, Perl, Python, etc..
The dependencies of the decent version of Vim are this:
http://www.gnowledge.org/debmap_view?objid=vim
That said, I think "the decent version of Vim" is kind of oxymoronic. Vim sucks bigtime. The fact that it is the best free software text editor doesn't talk too highly of the free software community.
well I guess I wasn't explicit enough. It really bothers me to install X and other stuff just to get syntax highlighting. I can't get a decent vim on a headless server with debian without that huge chunk of dependencies.
regarding the "vim sucks" part: do you know any better alternative? you seem to rule out emacs. Or is it a complain similar to what I think of LaTeX (it sucks but there are no better alternatives)?
When one says "vim sux bigtime" I don't stop thinking that we see an instance of user error. Granted, the learning curve is rather steep, but vim is the most efficient text editor of the world. And it works as it should, I yet to encounter a bug, though I am using it daily for years.