Go Meta Linter

The number of tools for statically checking Go source for errors and warnings is impressive.

This is a tool that concurrently runs a whole bunch of those linters and normalises their output to a standard format:

<file>:<line>:[<column>]: <message> (<linter>)

eg.

stutter.go:9::warning: unused global variable unusedGlobal (varcheck)
stutter.go:12:6:warning: exported type MyStruct should have comment or be unexported (golint)

It is intended for use with editor/IDE integration.

Editor integration

• SublimeLinter plugin.
• vim-go with the :GoMetaLinter command.
• syntastic (vim) let g:syntastic_go_checkers = ['gometalinter']
• Atom linter plugin.
• Emacs Flycheck checker.
• Go for Visual Studio Code.

Supported linters

• go vet - Reports potential errors that otherwise compile.
• go vet --shadow - Reports variables that may have been unintentionally shadowed.
• gotype - Syntactic and semantic analysis similar to the Go compiler.
• deadcode - Finds unused code.
• gocyclo - Computes the cyclomatic complexity of functions.
• golint - Google's (mostly stylistic) linter.
• varcheck - Find unused global variables and constants.
• structcheck - Find unused struct fields.
• aligncheck - Warn about un-optimally aligned structures.
• errcheck - Check that error return values are used.
• dupl - Reports potentially duplicated code.
• ineffassign - Detect when assignments to existing variables are not used.
• interfacer - Suggest narrower interfaces that can be used.
• unconvert - Detect redundant type conversions.
• goconst - Finds repeated strings that could be replaced by a constant.
• gosimple - Report simplifications in code.
• staticcheck - Statically detect bugs, both obvious and subtle ones.

Disabled by default (enable with --enable=<linter>):

• testify - Show location of failed testify assertions.
• test - Show location of test failures from the stdlib testing module.
• gofmt -s - Checks if the code is properly formatted and could not be further simplified.
• goimports - Checks missing or unreferenced package imports.
• lll - Report long lines (see --line-length=N).
• misspell - Finds commonly misspelled English words.
• unused - Find unused variables.

Additional linters can be added through the command line with --linter=NAME:COMMAND:PATTERN (see below).

Configuration file

gometalinter now supports a JSON configuration file which can be loaded via --config=<file>. The format of this file is determined by the Config struct in config.go.

The configuration file mostly corresponds to command-line flags, with the following exceptions:

• Linters defined in the configuration file will overlay existing definitions, not replace them.
• "Enable" defines the exact set of linters that will be enabled.

Here is an example configuration file:

{
  "DisableAll": true,
  "Enable": ["deadcode", "unconvert"]
}

Installing

There are two options for installing gometalinter.

1. Install a stable version, eg. go get -u gopkg.in/alecthomas/gometalinter.v1. I will generally only tag a new stable version when it has passed the Travis regression tests. The downside is that the binary will be called gometalinter.v1.
2. Install from HEAD with: go get -u github.com/alecthomas/gometalinter. This has the downside that changes to gometalinter may break.

Quickstart

Install gometalinter:

$ go get -u github.com/alecthomas/gometalinter

Install all known linters:

$ gometalinter --install
Installing:
  structcheck
  aligncheck
  deadcode
  gocyclo
  ineffassign
  dupl
  golint
  gotype
  goimports
  errcheck
  varcheck
  interfacer
  goconst
  gosimple
  staticcheck
  unused
  misspell
  lll

Run it:

$ cd example
$ gometalinter ./...
stutter.go:13::warning: unused struct field MyStruct.Unused (structcheck)
stutter.go:9::warning: unused global variable unusedGlobal (varcheck)
stutter.go:12:6:warning: exported type MyStruct should have comment or be unexported (golint)
stutter.go:16:6:warning: exported type PublicUndocumented should have comment or be unexported (golint)
stutter.go:8:1:warning: unusedGlobal is unused (deadcode)
stutter.go:12:1:warning: MyStruct is unused (deadcode)
stutter.go:16:1:warning: PublicUndocumented is unused (deadcode)
stutter.go:20:1:warning: duplicateDefer is unused (deadcode)
stutter.go:21:15:warning: error return value not checked (defer a.Close()) (errcheck)
stutter.go:22:15:warning: error return value not checked (defer a.Close()) (errcheck)
stutter.go:27:6:warning: error return value not checked (doit()           // test for errcheck) (errcheck)
stutter.go:29::error: unreachable code (vet)
stutter.go:26::error: missing argument for Printf("%d"): format reads arg 1, have only 0 args (vet)

Gometalinter also supports the commonly seen <path>/... recursive path format. Note that this can be very slow, and you may need to increase the linter --deadline to allow linters to complete.

FAQ

Exit status

gometalinter sets two bits of the exit status to indicate different issues:

Bit	Meaning
0	A linter generated an issue.
1	An underlying error occurred; eg. a linter failed to execute. In this situation a warning will also be displayed.

eg. linter only = 1, underlying only = 2, linter + underlying = 3

What's the best way to use gometalinter in CI?

There are two main problems running in a CI:

1. Linters break, causing gometalinter --install --update to error (this is no longer an issue as all linters are vendored).
2. gometalinter adds a new linter.

There is no great solution to 1, but for 2, the best option is to disable all linters, then explicitly enable the ones you want:

gometalinter --disable-all --enable=errcheck --enable=vet --enable=vetshadow ...

How do I make gometalinter work with Go 1.5 vendoring?

gometalinter has a --vendor flag that just sets GO15VENDOREXPERIMENT=1, however the underlying tools must support it. Ensure that all of the linters are up to date and built with Go 1.5 (gometalinter --install --force) then run gometalinter --vendor .. That should be it.

Why does gometalinter --install install a fork of gocyclo?

I forked gocyclo because the upstream behaviour is to recursively check all subdirectories even when just a single directory is specified. This made it unusably slow when vendoring. The recursive behaviour can be achieved with gometalinter by explicitly specifying <path>/.... There is a pull request open.

Gometalinter is not working

That's more of a statement than a question, but okay.

Sometimes gometalinter will not report issues that you think it should. There are three things to try in that case:

1. Update to the latest build of gometalinter and all linters

go get -u github.com/alecthomas/gometalinter
gometalinter --install

If you're lucky, this will fix the problem.

2. Analyse the debug output

If that doesn't help, the problem may be elsewhere (in no particular order):

1. Upstream linter has changed its output or semantics.
2. gometalinter is not invoking the tool correctly.
3. gometalinter regular expression matches are not correct for a linter.
4. Linter is exceeding the deadline.

To find out what's going on run in debug mode:

gometalinter --debug

This will show all output from the linters and should indicate why it is failing.

3. Report an issue.

Failing all else, if the problem looks like a bug please file an issue and include the output of gometalinter --debug.

Details

Additional linters can be configured via the command line:

$ gometalinter --linter='vet:go tool vet -printfuncs=Infof,Debugf,Warningf,Errorf {path}:PATH:LINE:MESSAGE' .
stutter.go:21:15:warning: error return value not checked (defer a.Close()) (errcheck)
stutter.go:22:15:warning: error return value not checked (defer a.Close()) (errcheck)
stutter.go:27:6:warning: error return value not checked (doit()           // test for errcheck) (errcheck)
stutter.go:9::warning: unused global variable unusedGlobal (varcheck)
stutter.go:13::warning: unused struct field MyStruct.Unused (structcheck)
stutter.go:12:6:warning: exported type MyStruct should have comment or be unexported (golint)
stutter.go:16:6:warning: exported type PublicUndocumented should have comment or be unexported (deadcode)

Checkstyle XML format

gometalinter supports checkstyle compatible XML output format. It is tiggered with --checkstyle flag:

gometalinter --checkstyle

Checkstyle format can be used to integrate gometalinter with Jenkins CI with the help of Checkstyle Plugin.