exclude vendor dir from matching ...

[omarkohl]

Go 1.9 changed the behavior of the Go tools such as "go test" and "go vet" to ignore the vendor directory when using triple dot (...) . See golang/go#19090

How about doing the same thing for golint? It makes sense to have different Go tools behave similarly.

[omarkohl]

It looks like it is addressed in #303 . Maybe this ticket could be considered as a proposal to make it the default behavior instead of an optional flag.

[nathany]

Making the default behaviour to ignore vendor would match Go 1.9, which is preferable in my mind.

Here are a few reasons for making golint ./... ignore the vendor directory by default.

1. Consistent with Go 1.9 behaviour for go test, go list, etc.
2. As per cmd/go: exclude vendor dir from matching ... go#19090, a solution that doesn't rely on Unix-specific tools (xargs) is beneficial for Windows users.
3. When there are an overwhelming number of lint issues from vendor, it's more likely that all lint issues will be ignored, rather than resolving lint issues within the project itself.

For example, in one project I'm working on, it looks like this:

❯ golint ./... | wc -l
    3987

Many of these lint issues may never be fixed, such as generated code for syscall.

vendor/golang.org/x/sys/unix/zsysnum_darwin_amd64.go:364:2: don't use ALL_CAPS in Go names; use CamelCase
...

If I break out some console-fu (e.g. StackOverflow) I can limit it to just the project:

❯ go list ./... | grep -v /vendor/ | xargs -L1 golint | wc -l
     183

But that isn't very user friendly, nor does it work on Windows.

/cc @dsymonds

[dlsniper]

Now that Go 1.9+ excludes vendor/ from ./... runs, maybe this can be reconsidered? Especially since go list ./... | xargs -L1 golint | wc -l does not exit with status 1 (unless further bash magic is applied). Thank you.

[yookoala]

Any updates on the consideration?

[bfosberry]

Bump

[jjrumi]

Not ideal but go list ./... | grep -v /vendor/ | xargs -L1 golint -set_exit_status does exit with error status

[dlsniper]

Unfortunately, that's not something that Windows users such as myself can run :(

[marcusljx]

Is there any update on this issue? I saw #325 but it seems it's been stagnant for over a year... I do have a need to maintain /vendor despite using go modules, due to legacy compatibility issues.

[nathany]

It looks like work on https://go-review.googlesource.com/c/lint/+/96085 has stalled. Perhaps someone else should pick it up?

[mvdan]

Thank you for submitting this issue! As per golang/go#38968, we are freezing and deprecating golint. There's no drop-in replacement to golint per se, but you should find that Staticcheck works well in encouraging good Go code, much like golint did in the past, since it also includes style checks. There's always gofmt and go vet too, of course.

If you would like to contribute further, I'd encourage you to engage Staticcheck's issue tracker or look at vet's open issues, as they are both actively maintained. If you have an idea that doesn't fit into either of those tools, you could look at other Go linters, or write your own - these days it's fairly straightforward with go/analysis.

To help avoid confusion, I'm closing all issues before we freeze the repository. If you have any feedback, you can leave a comment on the proposal thread where it was decided to deprecate golint - though note that the proposal has been accepted for nearly a year. Thanks!