programming-go

name	programming-go
description	Best practices when developing in Go codebases

Programming Go

Language idioms

• When the empty interface is genuinely needed, spell it any, never interface{}. (But prefer a concrete type — see Types and configuration.)

• Use the - tag when marshalling JSON should omit a field. Use this for private data on a field that's meant to be excluded from an API response.

• Use the Go 1.22 syntax for for loops:

Write this:

for i := range 10 {
    fmt.Println(i+1)
}

NOT THIS:

for i := 1; i <= 10; i++ {
    fmt.Println(i)
}

Types and configuration

• Prefer concrete types. Avoid any and map[string]any in public or cross-package types when a more concrete type is possible. If an upstream JSON schema is still loose, define named wrapper types so the shape carries domain meaning.
• Model finite command/config domains with concrete enum types so switch exhaustiveness checks catch missing cases.
• Avoid brittle nil normalization spread through business logic. Canonicalize at comparison or boundary points, and reach for current Go features where they clarify intent, such as new(false) for bool pointers.
• When passing config into lower layers, prefer a small interface implemented by the caller's config type over copying fields into another near-identical struct.
• Keep user-facing configuration names provider-neutral when the provider detail can live behind a catalog, adapter, or backend-specific payload. Users should choose capabilities or abilities, not provider implementation paths.
• Document exported types and exported struct fields with their expected behavior, defaults, and ownership.

Command-line interfaces

• For Go CLIs, use github.com/urfave/cli/v3 instead of the stdlib flag package when adding new commands or binaries in this repo.
• When building urfave/cli commands:
  • Define positional args with Arguments and Destination. Don't manually pull required args out of cmd.Args() inside Action.
  • Don't backfill positional Destination fields from cmd.Args(). Account for the parser lifecycle instead, and validate those destinations after argument parsing.
  • Initialize Config with its defaults in one place, then use the same field for both the flag's Value and Destination.
  • Put validation and setup that doesn't depend on parsed positional args in the command's Before hook. Keep Action focused on final validation and execution.
  • Prefer predicate methods on the command config, such as HasAgentName, for validation checks that describe config state.
• Keep CLI subcommands thin: they translate flags, args, and environment into focused internal packages. Put substantial subcommands in their own subpackages when the parent package gets crowded.

Validation, paths, and errors

• Validate path-like configuration before deriving new paths from it. Reject surprising input — globs, traversal, empty values, absolute paths — at the boundary and return a semantic error instead of constructing paths from unchecked strings.
• For validation failures that cross package boundaries, prefer exported concrete error types with fields and Unwrap/Is support so callers can inspect semantics.
• Use structured parsing helpers such as net.SplitHostPort for host and port handling instead of ad hoc string splitting, especially where IPv6 is possible.

Concurrency

• Prefer errgroup over hand-rolled goroutine synchronization when concurrent work needs error propagation.
• For fire-and-forget fan-out, use the Go 1.25 WaitGroup.Go method to add goroutines to a waitgroup. It takes the place of the go keyword:

wg.Go(func() {
    // your goroutine code here
})

The implementation is just a wrapper around this:

func (wg *WaitGroup) Go(f func()) {
    wg.Add(1)
    go func() {
        defer wg.Done()
        f()
    }()
}

Logging and error handling

• Don't silently discard operational errors. Log recoverable runtime failures at the boundary that handles them; only ignore errors that are truly unhelpful or impossible, and make that choice clear.
• Use stdlib log/slog for new structured logs. Prefer context-aware calls and structured attributes such as slog.Any("err", err) over custom log writers or interpolated error strings.
• Attribute your timeouts. Set deadlines with context.WithTimeoutCause(ctx, d, cause) (Go 1.21+) rather than context.WithTimeout, and read context.Cause(ctx) when a deadline fires. That turns a bare context deadline exceeded into an error that names which operation timed out and how long its budget was. The cause can be a sentinel you can errors.Is against to tell your own timeout apart from a parent's.

HTTP servers

• Use http.Server.Shutdown(ctx) with a bounded context for teardown instead of an abrupt Close when graceful shutdown is possible.

Performance

• Preallocate slices when appending from known inputs and the capacity is easy to compute, especially in aggregation code that combines catalog/config fragments with inline entries.

Naming

• Avoid naming methods Write unless the type intentionally behaves like an io.Writer. Prefer domain verbs such as Record, Render, or WriteProfile.
• Use receiver names that match the receiver type — usually one or two letters — and keep them consistent across a type's methods.

Packages

• Split packages by concept when a file starts carrying multiple distinct public types, policies, loggers, transports, and helpers. Keep helpers near the bottom of their focused file.
• You can use Go's LSP to rename packages, not just regular variables. The newly named package is updated in all references — and as a bonus it renames the directory too.

Package names

Good package names are short and clear. They are lower case, with no under_scores or mixedCaps. They are often simple nouns, such as:

• time (provides functionality for measuring and displaying time)
• list (implements a doubly linked list)
• http (provides HTTP client and server implementations)

The style of names typical of another language might not be idiomatic in a Go program. Here are two examples of names that might be good style in other languages but do not fit well in Go:

• computeServiceClient
• priority_queue

Abbreviate judiciously. Package names may be abbreviated when the abbreviation is familiar to the programmer. Widely-used packages often have compressed names:

• strconv (string conversion)
• syscall (system call)
• fmt (formatted I/O)

On the other hand, if abbreviating a package name makes it ambiguous or unclear, don’t do it.

Similarly, the function to make new instances of ring.Ring — which is the definition of a constructor in Go—would normally be called NewRing, but since Ring is the only type exported by the package, and since the package is called ring, it's called just New, which clients of the package see as ring.New. Use the package structure to help you choose good names.

Another short example is once.Do; once.Do(setup) reads well and would not be improved by writing once.DoOrWaitUntilDone(setup). Long names don't automatically make things more readable. A helpful doc comment can often be more valuable than an extra long name.

Don’t steal good names from the user. Avoid giving a package a name that is commonly used in client code. For example, the buffered I/O package is called bufio, not buf, since buf is a good variable name for a buffer.

Testing

• Use fixture files plus embed for non-trivial test inputs — TOML, SQL, JSON, request/response bodies. Avoid large inline fixture strings in test files.
• Put bulky test helpers and fakes in separate *_test.go helper files when they obscure the tests. Keep the test cases themselves near the top and easy to scan.
• Avoid assert* helpers that hide the expected behavior. Keep checks inline and left-aligned when that makes the happy path easier to scan.
• Use cmp.Diff for structured comparisons instead of several hand-written field checks when the diff will be easier to diagnose.
• Don't string-match errors in tests. Prefer errors.Is or errors.As with exported sentinel errors or concrete error types, especially when tests live outside the package.
• Test helpers should accept testing.TB, not only *testing.T, so they work for tests, benchmarks, and fuzz targets.
• Prefer external test packages, such as package deployer_test, when tests don't need unexported internals. This keeps package boundaries honest.
• Avoid wall-clock sleeps and short timeouts in tests. Prefer deterministic synchronization or testing/synctest when time must advance.
• Don't call t.Fatal or FailNow from goroutines or HTTP handler callbacks. Report with t.Error and return, or signal the test goroutine.
• Use Go build tags for OS-specific test files instead of runtime OS guards when the file shouldn't build or run on other platforms.

Tooling

• Local developer workflows should be just recipes. Don't add shell scripts that only wrap go run — add a recipe instead.