Overview

Go tools are the great features that exist alongside the language as part of the go command. Almost Go tools come together with Go installation, but there are some you might install depending on your needs.

Installation

The easiest way to install a Go tool is to run go get -u golang.org/x/tools/.... Another way to do it is to git clone the repository to $GOPATH/src/golang.org/x/tools.

There are some helpful flags:

-u forces the tool to sync with the latest version of the repo.

-d if you just want to clone a repo to your GOPATH and skip the building and installation phase.

Tools

go vet

The vet command will check your code for common errors. Let’s look at the types of errors vet can catch:

• Bad parameters in Printf-style function calls
• Method signature errors for common method definitions
• Bad struct tags
• Unkeyed composite literals

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package main

import "fmt"

func main() {
    // Printf calls whose arguments do not align with the format string.
    fmt.Printf("The quick brown fox jumped over lazy dogs", 3.14)
}

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$ go vet main.go
main.go:6: no formatting directive in Printf call

go list

It lists the packages named by the import paths, one per line.

go env

It prints Go environment information.

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$ go env
GO111MODULE=""
GOARCH="amd64"
GOBIN=""
...

If there are specific values that you’re interested in, you can pass them as arguments to go env.

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$ go env GOPATH GOOS GOARCH
/home/nana/go
linux
amd64

go fmt

Gofmt is a tool that automatically formats Go source code.

To format your code, you can use the gofmt tool directly:

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gofmt -w yourcode.go

Or you can use the “go fmt” command:

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go fmt path/to/your/package

It also supports rewrite rules that you can use to help refactor your code.

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var foo int

func bar() {
    foo = 1
	fmt.Println("foo")
}

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$ gofmt -d -w -r 'foo -> Foo' .
-var foo int
+var Foo int

 func bar() {
-	foo = 1
+	Foo = 1
 	fmt.Println("foo")
 }