Is is probably one the easiest languages to setup. However, there are some additional steps which can be taken improve the programming experience.

Common tools related to golang can be installed directly using go command.

#! /bin/bash

declare -a tools=(
  "github.com/go-task/task/v3/cmd/task@latest"
  "github.com/joho/godotenv/cmd/godotenv@latest"
  "github.com/nametake/golangci-lint-langserver@latest"
  "github.com/golangci/golangci-lint/cmd/golangci-lint@latest"
  "github.com/golang-migrate/migrate/v4/cmd/migrate@latest"
  "github.com/sqlc-dev/sqlc/cmd/sqlc@latest"
)

for tool in ${tools[@]}; do
  eval "go install -v ${tool}"
done

Modules

It is no longer compulsory to place your project files inside the directories specified above. Current versions of Go have introduced Go Modules. Inside any normal folder in the system, we can execute the following command to create a Go Module.

$ go mod init <program_name>

Configuring linters

Create a .golangci.yml file at the root of the project. Sample content are as follows.

version: "2"

linters:
  enable:
    - exhaustive
    - exhaustruct
    - gosec
    - nilnil
    - nilerr
    - contextcheck
    - gochecknoinits
    - godox
    - misspell
    - sloglint

  settings:
    sloglint:
      no-mixed-args: true
      static-msg: true
      key-naming-case: camel
      args-on-sep-lines: true

Note: Run the following command to get a list of all supported linters.

# list available linters
$ golangci-lint linters

# run linters
$ golangci-lint run ./...

Install Project Dependencies

When we run a project, Go detects all dependencies of the project. We can install all project dependencies using the following command. The following also looks for any unused dependencies and removes them.

$ go mod tidy

Installing dependencies from private sources

$ export GOPRIVATE=github.com/<repo-name>
$ go get github.com/<repo-name>

Note: Ensure that git is configured and can access the private repo. Also add the following inside you .gitconfig file.

# use ssh instead of https for cloning
[url "ssh://git@github.com/"]
    insteadOf = https://github.com/

Makefile

PROJECT = project
MAIN_FILE = ./cmd/$(PROJECT)/main.go

lint:
	golangci-lint run ./...

test:
	go test ./...

install:
	go mod tidy

run:
	go run $(MAIN_FILE)

build: lint test
	go build -o ./bin/$(PROJECT) $(MAIN_FILE)

.PHONY: lint install test run