lint

README

NOTE: Golint is deprecated and frozen. There's no drop-in replacement for it, but tools such as Staticcheck and go vet should be used instead.

Golint is a linter for Go source code.

Installation

Golint requires a supported release of Go.

go get -u golang.org/x/lint/golint

To find out where golint was installed you can run go list -f {{.Target}} golang.org/x/lint/golint. For golint to be used globally add that directory to the $PATH environment setting.

Usage

Invoke golint with one or more filenames, directories, or packages 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.

Purpose

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. Golint makes suggestions for many of the mechanically checkable items listed in Effective Go and the CodeReviewComments wiki page.

Scope

Golint is meant to carry out the stylistic conventions put forth in Effective Go and CodeReviewComments. Changes that are not aligned with those documents will not be considered.

Vim

Add this to your ~/.vimrc:

set rtp+=$GOPATH/src/golang.org/x/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/golang.org/x/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.

Documentation

Overview

Package lint contains a linter for Go source code.

Index

• type Linter
  • func (l *Linter) Lint(filename string, src []byte) ([]Problem, error)
  • func (l *Linter) LintFiles(files map[string][]byte) ([]Problem, error)
• type Problem
  • func (p *Problem) String() string

Types

type Linter

type Linter struct {
}

A Linter lints Go source code.

func (*Linter) Lint

func (l *Linter) Lint(filename string, src []byte) ([]Problem, error)

Lint lints src.

func (*Linter) LintFiles

func (l *Linter) LintFiles(files map[string][]byte) ([]Problem, error)

LintFiles lints a set of files of a single package. The argument is a map of filename to source.

type Problem

type Problem struct {
	Position   token.Position // position in source file
	Text       string         // the prose that describes the problem
	Link       string         // (optional) the link to the style guide for the problem
	Confidence float64        // a value in (0,1] estimating the confidence in this problem's correctness
	LineText   string         // the source line
	Category   string         // a short name for the general category of the problem

	// If the problem has a suggested fix (the minority case),
	// ReplacementLine is a full replacement for the relevant line of the source file.
	ReplacementLine string
}

Problem represents a problem in some source code.

func (*Problem) String

func (p *Problem) String() string