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HappyDeveloper
Asked: 2012-05-20 20:55:38 +0800 CST

How to set vim filetype when editing nginx config files

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When I open vim for a file like /etc/nginx/sites-available/default, syntax highlighting works fine. But then if I create my own file /etc/nginx/sites-available/myapp, vim does not highlight its syntax. I have to do :setf conf every time.

Is there anything I can put in ~/.vimrc to tell vim "if you don't know which syntax to use, just use conf" ?

A .vimrc template for a vim noob is also welcome. I'm not using it as an IDE, I use vim mostly for config files only.

Note: I'm using Ubuntu 12, in case it matters.

ubuntu vim

5 Answers

  1. There's actually an Nginx file type defined in the official Nginx repository in the contrib/vim directory. It provides better syntax highlighting than conf.

    To use it, copy the detection lines to your .vimrc (and tweak as desired):

    au BufRead,BufNewFile *.nginx set ft=nginx
au BufRead,BufNewFile */etc/nginx/* set ft=nginx
au BufRead,BufNewFile */usr/local/nginx/conf/* set ft=nginx
au BufRead,BufNewFile nginx.conf set ft=nginx

    Then copy nginx.vim to your ~/.vim/syntax directory.

    All Nginx files following the above rules should now be highlighted.

    If you'd like the indenting as well, you can also copy the file from the indent directory into your .vimrc.

    • 33
  2. Best Answer

    The following line in ~/.vimrc should do this.

    autocmd BufRead,BufNewFile /etc/nginx/sites-*/* setfiletype conf
    • 30

  3. Easiest way to get vim filetype you want is to specify it at the top of the file via a modeline. In this case, place the following comment in the first 5 lines of the file

    #       vim: set syntax=nginx ft=nginx

    More information on filetype and modeline is available here http://vimdoc.sourceforge.net/htmldoc/filetype.html http://vimdoc.sourceforge.net/htmldoc/options.html#modeline

    • 2

  4. No need to edit vimrc for that. Just take contrib/vim files from nginx source tree and place them into $HOME/.vim so that tree should be like that:

    /home/ubuntu/.vim
├── ftdetect
│   └── nginx.vim
├── ftplugin
│   └── nginx.vim
├── indent
│   └── nginx.vim
└── syntax
    └── nginx.vim

    Then whenever you open nginx.conf ft gets detected and highlight gets applied automatically.

    • 1

  5. In my case, on a small Debian install, the relevant files already existed (possibly for the default vim.tiny) but weren't sourced in regular vim. It was easily fixed with this:

    for d in ftdetect ftplugin indent syntax; do
    sudo mkdir /var/lib/vim/addons/$d
    sudo ln -s /usr/share/vim/addons/$d/nginx.vim /var/lib/vim/addons/$d/nginx.vim
done
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