golint

Golint is a static analysis tool for the Go programming language that analyzes Go source code and reports style and quality issues related to readability and consistency rather than functional correctness. It focuses on Go conventions such as the documentation of exported identifiers, naming conventions, and basic stylistic guidelines.

The tool checks for common issues including missing or poorly formatted documentation for exported types, functions, variables, and constants; suggestions to improve identifier names to align with Go’s naming conventions; and other readability-related suggestions. It does not perform deep semantic correctness checks, but aims to surface issues that can affect maintainability.

Usage and integration: Golint is a command-line tool installed from its repository, typically via go get or go install. Once installed, it can be run on a package or module directory to produce warnings with file and line information. The warnings can be integrated into development workflows, including continuous integration pipelines, and are commonly used alongside other tooling such as go fmt and go vet, or within broader linting suites.

Limitations and context: Golint is a lightweight style checker and does not cover all potential Go code quality concerns. Some warnings reflect opinionated style guidance and may not match every team’s conventions or the most current Go guidelines. Developers often supplement or replace it with more comprehensive tools, such as staticcheck or golangci-lint, to capture a wider range of issues.

See also: Go programming language, static analysis, code quality tools.