For my project I am constantly edition ROS .launch files, which are some kind of xml.

If I want to use syntax highlighting for better readability, I used to type :set filetype=xml . Which works, but gets kinda annoying in case you’ve got to type it multiple times a day.

In case you want to open .launch files with xml syntax by default, create a file in your .vim-folder:

mkdir $HOME/.vim/ #create the folder in case it doesn't exist yet
vim $HOME/.vim/filetype.vim #open it in vim

Change into insert mode (press i) and paste following code into it:

if exists("did_load_filetypes")
  finish
endif
augroup filetypedetect
  au! BufNewFile,BufRead *.launch setf xml
augroup END

Thats’s it, after that your vim will change:

before and default

after edits or set filetype=xml