Sublime Text syntax highlighting for .conf files

Sublime Text is awesome! But, there's no great way to get syntax highlighting for a Splunk .conf file... until now!

It works with Sublime Text 2 & 3!

Before

After

Installation

• Install it from Package Control - search for Splunk Conf File Syntax Highlighting

Manual Installation

• Clone the repo
• cd sublime-splunk-conf-highlighting

Sublime Text 2

• cp splunk-conf.tmLanguage ~/Library/Application\ Support/Sublime\ Text\ 2/Packages/user/splunk-conf.tmLanguage

Sublime Text 3

• cp splunk-conf.tmLanguage ~/Library/Application\ Support/Sublime\ Text\ 3/Packages/user/splunk-conf.tmLanguage

Patterns

Patterns are used to identify some part of a file.

Patterns used by this package:

• ^# DO NOT EDIT THIS FILE\\!$ - marks any lines as invalid if they are # DO NOT EDIT THIS FILE!
• ^#.*$ - marks any lines that start with # as a comment
• ^\\[.*\\]$ - marks any line starting with [ and ending with ] as a stanza
• ^[\\w+\\.\\-\\:]+ - marks the beginning of a line as a conf key; defined by any whitespace, alphanumeric, - or : characters
• = - marks any = as an equals sign

Patterns have 3 main attributes:

• match (or, begin and end): regex patterns
• name: a TextMate language grammar group, comment.line for an inline comment
• comment: a comment about the pattern

Resources

• This TextMate Language Grammars guide is really helpful for figuring out what name to use for each rule.

Development Notes

There are 2 important files here:

• splunk-conf.YAML-tmLanguage - The AAAPackageDev package compiles this to the following, this YAML file is much easier to use

• splunk-conf.tmLanguage - This is a TextMate language definition file in XML format. SublimeText uses this format, it's a necessary evil.

• Install package control if you haven't already

• cmd + shift + P (Mac) or ctrl + shift + P (Windows)

  • Install package
  • AAAPackageDev

• Open splunk-conf.YAML-tmLanguage

• cmd + B should update splunk-conf.tmLanguage, make a small change and see if it worked. If not, play with your build system settings under Tools -> Build System

• During development you'll need to constantly copy the splunk-conf.tmLanguage into your Sublime Text package folder, like so: cp splunk-conf.tmLanguage ~/Library/Application\ Support/Sublime\ Text\ 3/Packages/user/splunk-conf.tmLanguage

• If something doesn't seem to update, quit & reopen Sublime Text and it should work.