Go for Visual Studio Code
This extension adds rich language support for the Go language to VS Code.
Read the Release Notes to know what has changed over the last few versions of this extension.
Language Features
IntelliSense
- Auto Completion of symbols as you type (using
gocode
) - Signature Help for functions as you type (using
gogetdoc
orgodef
+go doc
) - Quick Info on the symbol as you hover over it (using
gogetdoc
orgodef
+go doc
)
Code Navigation
- Go to or Peek Definition of symbols (using
gogetdoc
orgodef
+go doc
) - Find References of symbols and Implementations of interfaces (using
guru
) - Go to symbol in file or see the file outline (using
go-outline
) - Go to symbol in workspace (using
go-symbols
) - Toggle between a Go program and the corresponding test file.
Code Editing
- Code Snippets for quick coding
- Format code on file save as well as format manually (using
goreturns
orgoimports
orgofmt
) - Symbol Rename (using
gorename
. Note: For Undo after rename to work in Windows you need to havediff
tool in your path) - Add Imports to current file (using
gopkgs
) - Add/Remove Tags on struct fields (using
gomodifytags
) - Generate method stubs for interfaces (using
impl
) - Fill struct literals with default values (using
fillstruct
)
Diagnostics
- Build-on-save to compile code and show build errors. (using
go build
andgo test
) - Vet-on-save to run
go vet
and show errors as warnings - Lint-on-save to show linting errors as warnings (using
golint
,gometalinter
,megacheck
,golangci-lint
orrevive
) - Semantic/Syntactic error reporting as you type (using
gotype-live
)
Testing
- Run Tests under the cursor, in current file, in current package, in the whole workspace using either commands or codelens
- Run Benchmarks under the cursor using either commands or codelens
- Show code coverage either on demand or after running tests in the package.
- Generate unit tests skeleton (using
gotests
)
Debugging
- Debug your code, binaries or tests (using
delve
)
Others
- Install/Update all dependent Go tools
- Upload to the Go Playground (using
goplay
)
How to use this extension?
Install and open Visual Studio Code. Press Ctrl+Shift+X
or Cmd+Shift+X
to open the Extensions pane. Find and install the Go extension. You can also install the extension from the Marketplace. Open any .go
file in VS Code. The extension is now activated.
This extension uses a set of Go tools to provide the various rich features. These tools are installed in your GOPATH by default. If you wish to have these tools in a separate location, provide the desired location in the setting go.toolsGopath
. Read more about this and the tools at Go tools that the Go extension depends on.
You will see Analysis Tools Missing
in the bottom right, clicking this will offer to install all of the dependent Go tools. You can also run the command Go: Install/Update tools
to install/update the same.
Note 1: Read GOPATH in the VS Code Go extension to learn about the different ways you can get the extension to set GOPATH.
Note 2: The Format on save
feature has a timeout of 750ms after which the formatting is aborted. You can change this timeout using the setting editor.formatOnSaveTimeout
. This feature gets disabled when you have enabled the Auto Save
feature in Visual Studio Code.
Note 3: This extension uses gocode
to provide completion lists as you type. If you have disabled the go.buildOnSave
setting, then you may not get fresh results from not-yet-built dependencies. Therefore, ensure you have built your dependencies manually in such cases.
Customizing the Go extension features
The Go extension is ready to use on the get go. If you want to customize the features, you can edit the settings in your User or Workspace settings. Read All Settings & Commands in Visual Studio Code Go extension for the full list of options and their descriptions.
Go Language Server (Experimental)
The Go extension uses a host of Go tools to provide the various language features. An alternative is to use a single language server that provides the same feature.
Set go.useLanguageServer
to true
to use the Go language server from Sourcegraph for features like Hover, Definition, Find All References, Signature Help, Go to Symbol in File and Workspace.
- Since only a single language server is spun up for given VS Code instance, having multi-root setup where the folders have different GOPATH is not supported.
- If set to true, you will be prompted to install the Go language server. Once installed, you will have to reload VS Code window. The language server will then be run by the Go extension in the background to provide services needed for the above mentioned features.
- Every time you change the value of the setting
go.useLanguageServer
, you need to reload the VS Code window for it to take effect. - To collect traces, set
"go.languageServerFlags": ["-trace"]
- To collect errors from language server in a logfile, set
"go.languageServerFlags": ["-trace", "-logfile", "path to a text file that exists"]
- Use the new setting
go.languageServerExperimentalFeatures
to opt-in to try new features like Code Completion and Formatting from the language server that might not be feature complete yet.
Linter
A linter is a tool giving coding style feedback and suggestions. By default this extension uses the official golint as a linter.
You can change the default linter and use the more advanced Go Meta Linter
by setting go.lintTool
to "gometalinter" in your settings.
Go Meta Linter uses a collection of various linters which will be installed for you by the extension.
Some of the very useful linter tools:
- errcheck checks for unchecked errors in your code.
- varcheck finds unused global variables and constants.
- deadcode finds unused code.
If you want to run only specific linters (some linters are slow), you can modify your configuration to specify them:
"go.lintFlags": ["--disable=all", "--enable=errcheck"],
Alternatively, you can use megacheck which
may have significantly better performance than gometalinter
, while only supporting a subset of the tools.
Another alternative is golangci-lint which shares some of the performance
characteristics of megacheck, but supports a broader range of tools.
You can configure golangci-lint with go.lintFlags
, for example to show issues only in new code and to enable all linters:
"go.lintFlags": ["--enable-all", "--new"],
An alternative of golint is revive. It is extensible, configurable, provides superset of the rules of golint, and has significantly better performance.
To configure revive, use:
"go.lintFlags": ["-exclude=vendor/...", "-config=${workspaceFolder}/config.toml"]
Finally, the result of those linters will show right in the code (locations with suggestions will be underlined), as well as in the output pane.
Commands
In addition to integrated editing features, the extension also provides several commands in the Command Palette for working with Go files:
Go: Add Import
to add an import from the list of packages in your Go contextGo: Current GOPATH
to see your currently configured GOPATHGo: Test at cursor
to run a test at the current cursor position in the active documentGo: Test Package
to run all tests in the package containing the active documentGo: Test File
to run all tests in the current active documentGo: Test Previous
to run the previously run test commandGo: Test All Packages in Workspace
to run all tests in the current workspaceGo: Generate Unit Tests For Package
Generates unit tests for the current packageGo: Generate Unit Tests For File
Generates unit tests for the current fileGo: Generate Unit Tests For Function
Generates unit tests for the selected function in the current fileGo: Install Tools
Installs/updates all the Go tools that the extension depends onGo: Add Tags
Adds configured tags to selected struct fields.Go: Remove Tags
Removes configured tags from selected struct fields.Go: Generate Interface Stubs
Generates method stubs for given interfaceGo: Fill Struct
Fills struct literal with default valuesGo: Run on Go Playground
Upload the current selection or file to the Go Playground
You can access all of the above commands from the command palette (Cmd+Shift+P
or Ctrl+Shift+P
).
A few of these are available in the editor context menu as an experimental feature as well. To control which of these commands show up in the editor context menu, update the setting go.editorContextMenuCommands
.
Optional: Debugging
To use the debugger, you must currently manually install delve
. See the Installation Instructions for full details. On MacOS it requires creating a self-signed cert to sign the dlv
binary.
For more read Debugging Go Code Using VS Code.
Remote Debugging
To remote debug using VS Code, read Remote Debugging.
Install or update all dependencies
To quickly get all dependencies installed (or updated) see the Go Tools wiki page.
Building and Debugging the Extension
You can set up a development environment for debugging the extension during extension development. Read more at Building, Debugging and Sideloading the extension in Visual Studio Code.
Tools this extension depends on
This extension uses a host of Go tools to provide the various rich features. These tools are installed in your GOPATH by default. If you wish to have the extension use a separate GOPATH for its tools, provide the desired location in the setting go.toolsGopath
. Read more about this and the tools at Go tools that the Go extension depends on.
Contributing
This project welcomes contributions and suggestions. Please go through our Contributing Guide to learn how you can contribute. It also includes details on the Contributor License Agreement.
Code of Conduct
This project has adopted the Microsoft Open Source Code of Conduct. For more information see the Code of Conduct FAQ or contact opencode@microsoft.com with any additional questions or comments.