golint
golint
is a linter for Go source code.
Installation and usage
To install, run
go get github.com/golang/lint/golint
Invoke golint
with one or more filenames, a directory, or a package named
by its import path. golint
uses the same import path syntax as the go
command and therefore
also supports relative import paths like “./...
”. Additionally, the “...
”
wildcard can be used as suffix on relative and absolute file paths to recurse
into them.
The output of this tool is a list of suggestions in Vim quickfix format,
which is accepted by lots of different editors.
What golint
is not
golint
differs from gofmt
. gofmt
reformats Go source code, whereas
golint
prints out style mistakes.
golint
differs from govet
. govet
is concerned with correctness, whereas
golint
is concerned with coding style. golint
is in use at Google, and it
seeks to match the accepted style of the open source Go project.
The suggestions made by golint
are exactly that: suggestions.
golint
is not perfect, and has both false positives and false negatives.
Do not treat its output as a gold standard. We will not be adding pragmas
or other knobs to suppress specific warnings, so do not expect or require
code to be completely “lint-free”.
In short, this tool is not, and will never be, trustworthy enough for its
suggestions to be enforced automatically, for example as part of a build process.
If you find an established style that is frequently violated, and which
you think golint
could statically check, file an issue.
Contributions
Contributions to this project are welcome, though please send mail before
starting work on anything major. Contributors retain their copyright, so we
need you to fill out a short form before we can accept your contribution:
Integration with editors
Vim
Add this to your ~/.vimrc
:
set rtp+=$GOPATH/src/github.com/golang/lint/misc/vim
If you have multiple entries in your GOPATH
, replace $GOPATH
with the right value.
Running :Lint
will run golint
on the current file and populate the quickfix list.
Optionally, add this to your ~/.vimrc
to automatically run golint
on :w
autocmd BufWritePost,FileWritePost *.go execute 'Lint' | cwindow
Emacs
Add this to your .emacs
file:
(add-to-list 'load-path (concat (getenv "GOPATH") "/src/github.com/golang/lint/misc/emacs"))
(require 'golint)
If you have multiple entries in your GOPATH
, replace $GOPATH
with the right value.
Running M-x golint
will run golint
on the current file.
For more usage, see Compilation-Mode.