# GolangCI-Lint
[](https://travis-ci.com/golangci/golangci-lint)
GolangCI-Lint is a linters aggregator. It's fast: on average [5 times faster](#performance) than gometalinter. It's [easy to integrate and use](#issues-options), has [nice output](#quick-start) and has a minimum number of false positives.
GolangCI-Lint has [integrations](#editor-integration) with VS Code, GNU Emacs, Sublime Text.
Sponsored by [GolangCI.com](https://golangci.com): SaaS service for running linters on Github pull requests. Free for Open Source.
* [Demo](#demo)
* [Install](#install)
* [Quick Start](#quick-start)
* [Editor Integration](#editor-integration)
* [Comparison](#comparison)
* [Performance](#performance)
* [Supported Linters](#supported-linters)
* [Configuration](#configuration)
* [False Positives](#false-positives)
* [Internals](#internals)
* [FAQ](#faq)
* [Thanks](#thanks)
* [Future Plans](#future-plans)
* [Contact Information](#contact-information)
# Demo
Short 1.5 min video demo of analyzing [beego](https://github.com/astaxie/beego).
[](https://asciinema.org/a/183662)
# Install
## CI Installation
The most installations are done for CI (travis, circleci etc). It's important to have reproducable CI:
don't start to fail all builds at one moment. With golangci-lint this can cappen if you
use `--enable-all` and new linter is added or even without `--enable-all`: when one linter
was upgraded from the upstream.
Therefore it's highly recommended to install a fixed version of golangci-lint.
Find needed version on the [releases page](https://github.com/golangci/golangci-lint/releases).
The recommended way to install golangci-lint is the next:
```bash
curl -sfL https://install.goreleaser.com/github.com/golangci/golangci-lint.sh | bash -s VERSION
```
Periodically update version of golangci-lint: we do active development
and deliver a lot of improvements. But do it explicitly with checking of
newly found issues.
## Local Installation
It's a not recommended for CI method. Do it only for the local development.
```bash
go get -u github.com/golangci/golangci-lint/cmd/golangci-lint
```
You can also install it by brew:
```bash
brew install golangci/tap/golangci-lint
brew upgrade golangci/tap/golangci-lint
```
# Quick Start
To run golangci-lint execute:
```bash
golangci-lint run
```
It's an equivalent of executing:
```bash
golangci-lint run ./...
```
You can choose which directories and files to analyze:
```bash
golangci-lint run dir1 dir2/... dir3/file1.go
```
Directories are analyzed NOT recursively, to analyze them recursively append `/...` to their path.
GolangCI-Lint can be used with zero configuration. By default next linters are enabled:
```
$ golangci-lint linters
{{.LintersCommandOutputEnabledOnly}}
```
and next linters are disabled by default:
```
$ golangci-lint linters
...
{{.LintersCommandOutputDisabledOnly}}
```
Pass `-E/--enable` to enable linter and `-D/--disable` to disable:
```bash
$ golangci-lint run --disable-all -E errcheck
```
# Editor Integration
1. [Go for Visual Studio Code](https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=ms-vscode.Go).
2. Sublime Text - [plugin](https://github.com/alecthomas/SublimeLinter-contrib-golang-cilint) for SublimeLinter.
3. GoLand
- Configure [File Watcher](https://www.jetbrains.com/help/go/settings-tools-file-watchers.html) with arguments `run --print-issued-lines=false $FileDir$`.
- Predefined File Watcher will be added in [issue](https://youtrack.jetbrains.com/issue/GO-4574).
4. GNU Emacs - [flycheck checker](https://github.com/weijiangan/flycheck-golangci-lint).
5. Vim - [issue](https://github.com/fatih/vim-go/issues/1841) for vim-go.
# Comparison
## `golangci-lint` vs `gometalinter`
GolangCI-Lint was created to fix next issues with `gometalinter`:
1. Slow work: `gometalinter` usually works for minutes in average projects. **GolangCI-Lint works [2-7x times faster](#performance)** by [reusing work](#internals).
2. Huge memory consumption: parallel linters don't share the same program representation and can eat `n` times more memory (`n` - concurrency). GolangCI-Lint fixes it by sharing representation and **eats 1.35x less memory**.
3. Can't set honest concurrency: if you set it to `n` it can take up to `n*n` threads because of forced threads in specific linters. `gometalinter` can't do anything about it, because it runs linters as black-boxes in forked processes. In GolangCI-Lint we run all linters in one process and fully control them. Configured concurrency will be honest.
This issue is important because often you'd like to set concurrency to CPUs count minus one to **not freeze your PC** and be able to work on it while analyzing code.
4. Lack of nice output. We like how compilers `gcc` and `clang` format their warnings: **using colors, printing of warned line and showing position in line**.
5. Too many issues. GolangCI-Lint cuts a lot of issues by using default exclude list of common false-positives. Also, it has enabled by default **smart issues processing**: merge multiple issues for one line, merge issues with the same text or from the same linter. All of these smart processors can be configured by the user.
6. Integration to large codebases. A good way to start using linters in a large project is not to fix all hundreds on existing issues, but setup CI and **fix only issues in new commits**. You can use `revgrep` for it, but it's yet another utility to install and configure. With `golangci-lint` it's much easier: `revgrep` is already built into `golangci-lint` and you can use it with one option (`-n, --new` or `--new-from-rev`).
7. Installation. With `gometalinter`, you need to run linters installation step. It's easy to forget this step and have stale linters. It also complicates CI setup. GolangCI-Lint requires **no installation of linters**.
8. **Yaml or toml config**. Gometalinter's JSON isn't convenient for configuration files.
## `golangci-lint` vs Run Needed Linters Manually
1. It will be much slower because `golangci-lint` runs all linters in parallel and shares 50-80% of linters work.
2. It will have less control and more false-positives: some linters can't be properly configured without hacks.
3. It will take more time because of different usages and need of tracking of versions of `n` linters.
# Performance
Benchmarks were executed on MacBook Pro (Retina, 13-inch, Late 2013), 2,4 GHz Intel Core i5, 8 GB 1600 MHz DDR3.
It has 4 cores and concurrency for linters was default: number of cores.
Benchmark runs and measures timings automatically, it's code is
[here](https://github.com/golangci/golangci-lint/blob/master/test/bench_test.go) (`BenchmarkWithGometalinter`).
We measure peak memory usage (RSS) by tracking of processes RSS every 5 ms.
## Comparison with gometalinter
We compare golangci-lint and gometalinter in default mode, but explicitly specify all linters to enable because of small differences in the default configuration.
```bash
$ golangci-lint run --no-config --issues-exit-code=0 --deadline=30m \
--disable-all --enable=deadcode --enable=gocyclo --enable=golint --enable=varcheck \
--enable=structcheck --enable=maligned --enable=errcheck --enable=dupl --enable=ineffassign \
--enable=interfacer --enable=unconvert --enable=goconst --enable=gas --enable=megacheck
$ gometalinter --deadline=30m --vendor --cyclo-over=30 --dupl-threshold=150 \
--exclude= --skip=testdata --skip=builtin \
--disable-all --enable=deadcode --enable=gocyclo --enable=golint --enable=varcheck \
--enable=structcheck --enable=maligned --enable=errcheck --enable=dupl --enable=ineffassign \
--enable=interfacer --enable=unconvert --enable=goconst --enable=gas --enable=megacheck
./...
```
| Repository | GolangCI Time | GolangCI Is Faster than Gometalinter | GolangCI Memory | GolangCI eats less memory than Gometalinter |
| ---------- | ------------- | ------------------------------------ | --------------- | ------------------------------------------- |
| gometalinter repo, 4 kLoC | 6s | **6.4x** | 0.7GB | 1.5x |
| self-repo, 4 kLoC | 12s | **7.5x** | 1.2GB | 1.7x |
| beego, 50 kLoC | 10s | **4.2x** | 1.4GB | 1.1x |
| hugo, 70 kLoC | 15s | **6.1x** | 1.6GB | 1.8x |
| consul, 127 kLoC | 58s | **4x** | 2.7GB | 1.7x |
| terraform, 190 kLoC | 2m13s | **1.6x** | 4.8GB | 1x |
| go-ethereum, 250 kLoC | 33s | **5x** | 3.6GB | 1x |
| go source, 1300 kLoC | 2m45s | **2x** | 4.7GB | 1x |
**On average golangci-lint is 4.6 times faster** than gometalinter. Maximum difference is in the
self-repo: **7.5 times faster**, minimum difference is in terraform source code repo: 1.8 times faster.
On average golangci-lint consumes 1.35 times less memory.
# Supported Linters
To see a list of supported linters and which linters are enabled/disabled by default execute a command
```
golangci-lint linters
```
## Enabled By Default Linters
{{.EnabledByDefaultLinters}}
## Disabled By Default Linters (`-E/--enable`)
{{.DisabledByDefaultLinters}}
# Configuration
Configuration file has lower priority than command-line: if the same bool/string/int option defined in the command-line
and in the configuration file, option from command-line will be used.
Slice options (e.g. list of enabled/disabled linters) are combined from the command-line and configuration file.
## Command-Line Options
```
golangci-lint run -h
{{.RunHelpText}}
```
## Configuration File
GolangCI-Lint looks for next config paths in the current directory:
- `.golangci.yml`
- `.golangci.toml`
- `.golangci.json`
GolangCI-Lint also searches config file in all directories from directory of the first analyzed path up to the root.
To see which config file is used and where it was searched run golangci-lint with `-v` option.
Configuration options inside the file are identical to command-line options.
You can configure specific linters options only within configuration file, it can't be done with command-line.
There is a [`.golangci.yml`](https://github.com/golangci/golangci-lint/blob/master/.golangci.example.yml) with all supported options.
It's a [.golangci.yml](https://github.com/golangci/golangci-lint/blob/master/.golangci.yml) of this repo: we enable more linters
than by default and make their settings more strict:
```yaml
{{.GolangciYaml}}
```
# False Positives
False positives are inevitable, but we did our best to reduce their count. For example, we have an enabled by default set of [exclude patterns](#issues-options). If false positive occurred you have next choices:
1. Exclude issue by text using command-line option `-e` or config option `issues.exclude`. It's helpful when you decided to ignore all issues of this type.
2. Exclude this one issue by using special comment `// nolint[:linter1,linter2,...]` on issued line.
Comment `// nolint` disables all issues reporting on this line. Comment e.g. `// nolint:govet` disables only govet issues for this line.
If you would like to completely exclude all issues for some function prepend this comment
above function:
```go
//nolint
func f() {
...
}
```
Please create [GitHub Issues here](https://github.com/golangci/golangci-lint/issues/new) about found false positives. We will add it to default exclude list if it's common or we will fix underlying linter.
# Internals
The key difference with gometalinter is that golangci-lint shares work between specific linters (golint, govet, ...).
For small and medium projects 50-80% of work between linters can be reused.
Now we share `loader.Program` and `SSA` representation building. `SSA` representation is used from
a [fork of go-tools](https://github.com/dominikh/go-tools), not the official one. Also, we are going to
reuse `AST` parsing and traversal.
We don't fork to call specific linter but use its API. We forked GitHub repos of almost all linters
to make API. It also allows us to be more performant and control actual count of used threads.
All linters are vendored in `/vendor` folder: their version is fixed, they are builtin
and you don't need to install them separately.
We use chains for issues and independent processors to post-process them: exclude issues by limits,
nolint comment, diff, regexps; prettify paths etc.
We use `cobra` for command-line action.
# FAQ
**Q: How to add custom linter?**
A: You can integrate it yourself, see this [wiki page](https://github.com/golangci/golangci-lint/wiki/How-to-add-a-custom-linter) with documentation. Or you can create [GitHub Issue](https://github.com/golangci/golangci-lint/issues/new) and we will integrate it soon.
**Q: It's cool to use `golangci-lint` when starting a project, but what about existing projects with large codebase? It will take days to fix all found issues**
A: We are sure that every project can easily integrate `golangci-lint`, even the large one. The idea is to not fix all existing issues. Fix only newly added issue: issues in new code. To do this setup CI (or better use [GolangCI](https://golangci.com) to run `golangci-lint` with option `--new-from-rev=origin/master`. Also, take a look at option `-n`.
By doing this you won't create new issues in code and can smoothly fix existing issues (or not).
**Q: How to use `golangci-lint` in CI (Continuous Integration)?**
A: You have 2 choices:
1. Use [GolangCI](https://golangci.com): this service is highly integrated with GitHub (issues are commented in the pull request) and uses a `golangci-lint` tool. For configuration use `.golangci.yml` (or toml/json).
2. Use custom CI: just run `golangci-lint` in CI and check the exit code. If it's non-zero - fail the build. The main disadvantage is that you can't see found issues in pull request code and should view build log, then open needed source file to see a context.
If you'd like to vendor `golangci-lint` in your repo, run:
```bash
go get -u github.com/golang/dep/cmd/dep
dep init
dep ensure -v -add github.com/golangci/golangci-lint/cmd/golangci-lint
```
Then add these lines to your `Gopkg.toml` file, so `dep ensure -update` won't delete the vendored `golangci-lint` code.
```toml
required = [
"github.com/golangci/golangci-lint/cmd/golangci-lint",
]
```
In your CI scripts, install the vendored `golangci-lint` like this:
```bash
go install ./vendor/github.com/golangci/golangci-lint/cmd/golangci-lint/`
```
Vendoring `golangci-lint` saves a network request, potentially making your CI system a little more reliable.
**Q: `golangci-lint` doesn't work**
1. Update it: `go get -u github.com/golangci/golangci-lint/cmd/golangci-lint`
2. Run it with `-v` option and check the output.
3. If it doesn't help create [GitHub issue](https://github.com/golangci/golangci-lint/issues/new) with the output.
# Thanks
Thanks to [alecthomas/gometalinter](https://github.com/alecthomas/gometalinter) for inspiration and amazing work.
Thanks to [bradleyfalzon/revgrep](https://github.com/bradleyfalzon/revgrep) for cool diff tool.
Thanks to developers and authors of used linters:
{{.ThanksList}}
# Future Plans
1. Upstream all changes of forked linters.
2. Fully integrate all used linters: make a common interface and reuse 100% of what can be reused: AST traversal, packages preparation etc.
3. Make it easy to write own linter/checker: it should take a minimum code, have perfect documentation, debugging and testing tooling.
4. Speedup packages loading (dig into [loader](golang.org/x/tools/go/loader)): on-disk cache and existing code profiling-optimizing.
5. Analyze (don't only filter) only new code: analyze only changed files and dependencies, make incremental analysis, caches.
6. Smart new issues detector: don't print existing issues on changed lines.
7. Integration with Text Editors. On-the-fly code analysis for text editors: it should be super-fast.
8. Minimize false-positives by fixing linters and improving testing tooling.
9. Automatic issues fixing (code rewrite, refactoring) where it's possible.
10. Documentation for every issue type.
# Contact Information
You can contact the [author](https://github.com/jirfag) of GolangCI-Lint
by [denis@golangci.com](mailto:denis@golangci.com).