Add GoLang syntax highlighting for VIM

I'm trying to add Go language syntax highlighting to VIM on ubuntu with resources and direction supplied here http://go-lang.cat-v.org/text-editors/vim/.

Go comes with a go.vim file that contains syntax settings for VIM and the above page offers the following instructions

Place $GOROOT/misc/vim/syntax/go.vim in ~/.vim/syntax/ and put the following in ~/.vim/ftdetect/go.vim:

au BufRead,BufNewFile *.go set filetype=go 

This is more or less the same vein of procedure for customizing vim syntax I've seen elsewhere
(https://stackoverflow.com/questions/12962233/vim-7-3-on-ubuntu-12-10-doesnt-have-ftplugin-directory-anywhere and https://github.com/jnwhiteh/vim-golang/blob/master/readme.txt)

So I think I'm doing the right thing when I create directories:<br>
~/.vim<br>
~/.vim/syntax<br>
~/.vim/ftdetect<br>

and follow the above instructions by adding

go.vim to ~/.vim/syntax/
and creating a file, go.vim, in ~/.vim/ftdetect/ which contains

au BufRead,BufNewFile *.go set filetype=go

Yet syntax highlighting does not seem to occur. Is there something I need to do to force VIM to look at these new settings files?

UPDATE:

> Go 1.4 Release Notes
>
>
> Miscellany
>
> The standard repository's top-level misc directory used to contain Go
> support for editors and IDEs: plugins, initialization
> scripts and so on. Maintaining these was becoming time-consuming and
> needed external help because many of the editors listed were not used
> by members of the core team. It also required us to make decisions
> about which plugin was best for a given editor, even for editors we do
> not use.
> The Go community at large is much better suited to managing this information. In Go 1.4, therefore, this support has been removed from
> the repository. Instead, there is a curated, informative list of
> what's available on a wiki page.

The standard Go distribution includes Go files for Vim in go/misc/vim/. This directory contains a readme.txt file which contains installation instructions.

> readme.txt

> Vim plugins for Go (http://golang.org)
>
> To use all the Vim plugins, add these lines to your $HOME/.vimrc.
>
> " Some Linux distributions set filetype in /etc/vimrc.
> " Clear filetype flags before changing runtimepath to force Vim to reload them.
> filetype off
> filetype plugin indent off
> set runtimepath+=$GOROOT/misc/vim
> filetype plugin indent on
> syntax on
>
> If you want to select fewer plugins, use the instructions in the rest
> of this file.
>
> <<..SNIP..>>

On Debian, I suppose it's the same on ubuntu, you just :

sudo apt-get install vim-gocomplete gocode vim-syntax-go
vim-addon-manager install go-syntax
vim-addon-manager install gocode

you can just add these lines to your ~/.vimrc:

set rtp+=$GOROOT/misc/vim
filetype plugin indent on
syntax on

EDIT This assumes filetype plugin indent off before these lines (i.e. beginning of .vimrc file) and may cause problems if it's not. See @peterSO's answer below for the safer version.

For the best syntax highlighting try https://github.com/fatih/vim-go

It's a new project that consolidates many vim plugins and adds a lot of features. From the readme:

• Improved Syntax highlighting, such as Functions, Operators, Methods..
• Auto completion support via gocode
• Better gofmt on save, keeps cursor position and doesn't break your undo history
• Go to symbol/declaration with godef
• Automatically import packages via goimports
• Compile and go build your package, install it with go install
• go run quickly your current file/files
• Run go test and see any errors in quickfix window
• Lint your code with golint
• Run your code trough go vet to catch static errors.
• Advanced source analysis tool with oracle
• List all source files and dependencies
• Checking with errcheck for unchecked errors.
• Integrated and improved snippets. Supports ultisnips or neosnippet
• Share your current code to play.golang.org

on 25/Jan/2015

Please see https://github.com/golang/go/wiki/IDEsAndTextEditorPlugins as now all editor & shell support in Go repo is removed (https://codereview.appspot.com/105470043)

I did not find instructions on turning on vim syntax highlighting for CentOS 7. Have tested the ensuing instructions to work on CentOS 7.3.1611. First, create the following directory in your home directory:

$ mkdir ~/.vim/ftdetect/

Then, create a file named, go.vim inside the above directory with the contents:

au BufRead,BufNewFile *.go set filetype=go

Download the syntax definition file for Go: vim.go. Transfer it to the right system-wide directory so that multiple users can share:

$ sudo mv -i go.vim /usr/share/vim/vim74/syntax/

For whatever reason outside of my own decision making, we got Golang installed on our dev VMs by Debian packages. This particular distribution of vim doesn't come with any of the goodies for vim as far as I was able to tell from a search around for it. Anyways, I decided to go the vundle route in order to rapidly deploy the goodies to all these dev VMs. You could probably work this method into puppet or something if you'd like, we didn't do that though. Anyways, here's what I did:

Step 1: Install vundle:
https://github.com/gmarik/vundle

Step 2: put this line in your .vimrc (It's from here, of course: https://github.com/jnwhiteh/vim-golang ), and then run vim from the command line like vim +BundleInstall +qall or from within vim with :BundleInstall

Bundle 'jnwhiteh/vim-golang'

Step 3: Save this little bash script I whipped up as govim.sh or whatever, chmod +x govim.sh, and run it like ./govim.sh

Script as follows:

#!/bin/bash
mkdir $HOME/.vim/ftdetect
mkdir $HOME/.vim/syntax
mkdir $HOME/.vim/autoload
mkdir $HOME/.vim/autoload/go
mkdir $HOME/.vim/ftplugin
mkdir $HOME/.vim/ftplugin/go
mkdir $HOME/.vim/indent
mkdir $HOME/.vim/compiler
mkdir $HOME/.vim/plugin
mkdir $HOME/.vim/plugin/godoc
ln -s $HOME/.vim/bundle/vim-golang/ftdetect/gofiletype.vim $HOME/.vim/ftdetect
ln -s $HOME/.vim/bundle/vim-golang/syntax/go.vim $HOME/.vim/syntax/
ln -s $HOME/.vim/bundle/vim-golang/autoload/go/complete.vim $HOME/.vim/autoload/go/
ln -s $HOME/.vim/bundle/vim-golang/ftplugin/go.vim $HOME/.vim/ftplugin/
ln -s $HOME/.vim/bundle/vim-golang/ftplugin/go/*.vim $HOME/.vim/ftplugin/go/
ln -s $HOME/.vim/bundle/vim-golang/indent/go.vim $HOME/.vim/indent/
ln -s $HOME/.vim/bundle/vim-golang/compiler/go.vim $HOME/.vim/compiler/
ln -s $HOME/.vim/bundle/vim-golang/plugin/godoc/godoc.vim $HOME/.vim/plugin/godoc/
ln -s $HOME/.vim/bundle/vim-golang/syntax/godoc.vim $HOME/.vim/syntax/

Kaching! You now have all the goodies installed, and someone correct me if I'm wrong on this but perhaps more than what comes with the official Golang distribution. I don't know about this either having not tried it yet, but I think that the runtimepath/rtp gets clobbered if you use Vundle with the other answers here anyways.

It should be easy as 1, 2, 3 :

1. Download the file vim.go and place in in ~/.vim/syntax under the name go.vim (create the directory syntax if you don't already have it).

2. If you don't already have the file ~/.vim/ftdetect/go.vim, create it (and the folder if necessary).

3. In .vim/ftdetect/go.vim, add the following line : au BufRead,BufNewFile *.go set filetype=go

This page says that:

Place $GOROOT/misc/vim/syntax/go.vim in ~/.vim/syntax/ 
and put the following in ~/.vim/ftdetect/go.vim:

au BufRead,BufNewFile *.go set filetype=go

It worked for me, only i did not find the /misc/vim/go.vim directory at first. So i copied the files from another computer that had installed go on /usr/local/go/...

This is what worked for me in MAC

• Install vim-go - https://github.com/fatih/vim-go
• Set the .vimrc to the following

<!-- begin snippet: js hide: false console: true babel: false -->

<!-- language: lang-html -->

let g:tagbar_type_go = {
\ 'ctagstype' : 'go',
\ 'kinds'     : [
\ 'p:package',
\ 'i:imports:1',
\ 'c:constants',
\ 'v:variables',
\ 't:types',
\ 'n:interfaces',
\ 'w:fields',
\ 'e:embedded',
\ 'm:methods',
\ 'r:constructor',
\ 'f:functions'
\ ],
\ 'sro' : '.',
\ 'kind2scope' : {
\ 't' : 'ctype',
\ 'n' : 'ntype'
\ },
\ 'scope2kind' : {
\ 'ctype' : 't',
\ 'ntype' : 'n'
\ },
\ 'ctagsbin'  : 'gotags',
\ 'ctagsargs' : '-sort -silent'
\ }
let g:go_highlight_structs = 1
let g:go_highlight_methods = 1
let g:go_highlight_functions = 1
let g:go_highlight_operators = 1
let g:go_highlight_build_constraints = 1
syntax on

• Install gotags - e.g. brew install gotags
• Generate ctags - e.g. gorags -R . > ./tags
• Open vim from the new shell

Turns out the directions above were slightly ambiguous.

~/.vim/syntax/go.vim should have the same contents as ~/.vim/ftdetect/go.vim

only ~/.vim/ftdetect/go.vim must be appended with au BufRead,BufNewFile *.go set filetype=go.

If taken literally, the directions tell you to create a file ~/.vim/ftdetect/go.vim containing only

         au BufRead,BufNewFile *.go set filetype=go

I suppose that's where contextual knowledge should kick in. Only I'd never done this before and had no such context. Thanks all!