revive

Fast, configurable, extensible, flexible, and beautiful linter for Go. Drop-in replacement of golint. Revive provides a framework for development of custom rules, and lets you define a strict preset for enhancing your development & code review processes.

Logo by Georgi Serev

Here's how revive is different from golint:

• Allows to enable or disable rules using a configuration file.
• Allows to configure the linting rules with a TOML file.
• 2x faster running the same rules as golint.
• Provides functionality for disabling a specific rule or the entire linter for a file or a range of lines.
  • golint allows this only for generated files.
• Optional type checking. Most rules in golint do not require type checking. If you disable them in the config file, revive will run over 6x faster than golint.
• Provides multiple formatters which let us customize the output.
• Allows to customize the return code for the entire linter or based on the failure of only some rules.
• Everyone can extend it easily with custom rules or formatters.
• Revive provides more rules compared to golint.

Who uses Revive

• tidb - TiDB is a distributed HTAP database compatible with the MySQL protocol
• grafana - The tool for beautiful monitoring and metric analytics & dashboards for Graphite, InfluxDB & Prometheus & More
• etcd - Distributed reliable key-value store for the most critical data of a distributed system
• cadence - Cadence is a distributed, scalable, durable, and highly available orchestration engine by Uber to execute asynchronous long-running business logic in a scalable and resilient way
• ferret - Declarative web scraping
• gopass - The slightly more awesome standard unix password manager for teams
• gitea - Git with a cup of tea, painless self-hosted git service
• excelize - Go library for reading and writing Microsoft Excel™ (XLSX) files
• aurora - aurora is a web-based Beanstalk queue server console written in Go
• soar - SQL Optimizer And Rewriter
• pyroscope - Continuous profiling platform
• gorush - A push notification server written in Go (Golang).
• dry - dry - A Docker manager for the terminal.
• go-echarts - The adorable charts library for Golang
• reviewdog - Automated code review tool integrated with any code analysis tools regardless of programming language
• rudder-server - Privacy and Security focused Segment-alternative, in Golang and React.
• sklearn - A partial port of scikit-learn written in Go.
• protoc-gen-doc - Documentation generator plugin for Google Protocol Buffers.
• llvm - Library for interacting with LLVM IR in pure Go.
• jenkins-library - Jenkins shared library for Continuous Delivery pipelines by SAP.
• pd - Placement driver for TiKV.
• shellhub - ShellHub enables teams to easily access any Linux device behind firewall and NAT.
• lorawan-stack - The Things Network Stack for LoRaWAN V3
• gin-jwt - This is a JWT middleware for Gin framework.
• gofight - Testing API Handler written in Golang.
• Beaver - A Real Time Messaging Server.
• ggz - An URL shortener service written in Golang
• Codeac.io - Automated code review service integrates with GitHub, Bitbucket and GitLab (even self-hosted) and helps you fight technical debt.

Open a PR to add your project.

• revive
  • Installation
  • Usage
    • Bazel
    • Text Editors
    • Continuous Integration
    • Linter Aggregators
      • golangci-lint
    • Command Line Flags
    • Sample Invocations
    • Comment Annotations
    • Configuration
    • Default Configuration
    • Custom Configuration
    • Recommended Configuration
  • Available Rules
  • Configurable rules
    • var-naming
  • Available Formatters
    • Friendly
    • Stylish
    • Default
    • Plain
    • Unix
    • SARIF
  • Extensibility
    • Custom Rule
      • Example
    • Custom Formatter
  • Speed Comparison
    • golint
    • revive
  • Overriding colorization detection
  • Contributors
  • License

Installation

go install github.com/mgechev/revive@latest

or get a released executable from the Releases page.

You can install the main branch (including the last commit) with:

go install github.com/mgechev/revive@master

Usage

Since the default behavior of revive is compatible with golint, without providing any additional flags, the only difference you'd notice is faster execution.

revive supports a -config flag whose value should correspond to a TOML file describing which rules to use for revive's linting. If not provided, revive will try to use a global config file (assumed to be located at $HOME/revive.toml). Otherwise, if no configuration TOML file is found then revive uses a built-in set of default linting rules.

Docker

A volume needs to be mounted to share the current repository with the container.
Please refer to the bind mounts Docker documentation

docker run -v "$(pwd)":/var/<repository> ghcr.io/mgechev/revive:v1.1.2-next -config /var/<repository>/revive.toml -formatter stylish ./var/kidle/...

• -v is for the volume
• ghcr.io/mgechev/revive:v1.1.2-next is the image name and its version corresponding to revive command
• The provided flags are the same as the binary usage.

Bazel

If you want to use revive with Bazel, take a look at the rules that Atlassian maintains.

Text Editors

• Support for VSCode in vscode-go.
• Support for GoLand via File Watchers.
• Support for Atom via linter-revive.
• Support for vim via dense-analysis/ale.

let g:ale_linters = {
\   'go': ['revive'],
\}

GitHub Actions

• Revive Action with annotation support

Continuous Integration

Codeac.io - Automated code review service integrates with GitHub, Bitbucket and GitLab (even self-hosted) and helps you fight technical debt. Check your pull-requests with revive automatically. (free for open-source projects)

Linter aggregators

golangci-lint

To enable revive in golangci-lint you need to add revive to the list of enabled linters:

# golangci-lint configuration file
linters:
   enable:
     - revive

Then revive can be configured by adding an entry to the linters-settings section of the configuration, for example:

# golangci-lint configuration file
linters-settings:
  revive:
    ignore-generated-header: true
    severity: warning
    rules:
      - name: atomic
      - name: line-length-limit
        severity: error
        arguments: [80]
      - name: unhandled-error
        arguments : ["fmt.Printf", "myFunction"]

The above configuration enables three rules of revive: atomic, line-length-limit and unhandled-error and pass some arguments to the last two. The Configuration section of this document provides details on how to configure revive. Note that while revive configuration is in TOML, that of golangci-lint is in YAML.

Please notice that if no particular configuration is provided, revive will behave as go-lint does, i.e. all go-lint rules are enabled (the Available Rules table details what are the go-lint rules). When a configuration is provided, only rules in the configuration are enabled.

Command Line Flags

revive accepts the following command line parameters:

• -config [PATH] - path to config file in TOML format, defaults to $HOME/revive.toml if present.

• -exclude [PATTERN] - pattern for files/directories/packages to be excluded for linting. You can specify the files you want to exclude for linting either as package name (i.e. github.com/mgechev/revive), list them as individual files (i.e. file.go), directories (i.e. ./foo/...), or any combination of the three.

• -formatter [NAME] - formatter to be used for the output. The currently available formatters are:

  • default - will output the failures the same way that golint does.
  • json - outputs the failures in JSON format.
  • ndjson - outputs the failures as stream in newline delimited JSON (NDJSON) format.
  • friendly - outputs the failures when found. Shows summary of all the failures.
  • stylish - formats the failures in a table. Keep in mind that it doesn't stream the output so it might be perceived as slower compared to others.
  • checkstyle - outputs the failures in XML format compatible with that of Java's Checkstyle.

• -max_open_files - maximum number of open files at the same time. Defaults to unlimited.

• -set_exit_status - set exit status to 1 if any issues are found, overwrites errorCode and warningCode in config.

• -version - get revive version.

Sample Invocations

revive -config revive.toml -exclude file1.go -exclude file2.go -formatter friendly github.com/mgechev/revive package/...

• The command above will use the configuration from revive.toml
• revive will ignore file1.go and file2.go
• The output will be formatted with the friendly formatter
• The linter will analyze github.com/mgechev/revive and the files in package

Comment Directives

Using comments, you can disable the linter for the entire file or only range of lines:

//revive:disable

func Public() {}
//revive:enable

The snippet above, will disable revive between the revive:disable and revive:enable comments. If you skip revive:enable, the linter will be disabled for the rest of the file.

With revive:disable-next-line and revive:disable-line you can disable revive on a particular code line.

You can do the same on a rule level. In case you want to disable only a particular rule, you can use:

//revive:disable:unexported-return
func Public() private {
  return private
}
//revive:enable:unexported-return

This way, revive will not warn you for that you're returning an object of an unexported type, from an exported function.

You can document why you disable the linter by adding a trailing text in the directive, for example

//revive:disable Until the code is stable

//revive:disable:cyclomatic High complexity score but easy to understand

You can also configure revive to enforce documenting linter disabling directives by adding

[directive.specify-disable-reason]

in the configuration. You can set the severity (defaults to warning) of the violation of this directive

[directive.specify-disable-reason]
    severity = "error"

Configuration

revive can be configured with a TOML file. Here's a sample configuration with explanation for the individual properties:

# When set to false, ignores files with "GENERATED" header, similar to golint
ignoreGeneratedHeader = true

# Sets the default severity to "warning"
severity = "warning"

# Sets the default failure confidence. This means that linting errors
# with less than 0.8 confidence will be ignored.
confidence = 0.8

# Sets the error code for failures with severity "error"
errorCode = 0

# Sets the error code for failures with severity "warning"
warningCode = 0

# Configuration of the `cyclomatic` rule. Here we specify that
# the rule should fail if it detects code with higher complexity than 10.
[rule.cyclomatic]
  arguments = [10]

# Sets the severity of the `package-comments` rule to "error".
[rule.package-comments]
  severity = "error"

By default revive will enable only the linting rules that are named in the configuration file. For example, the previous configuration file makes revive to enable only cyclomatic and package-comments linting rules.

To enable all available rules you need to add:

enableAllRules = true

This will enable all available rules no matter of what rules are named in the configuration file.

To disable a rule, you simply mark it as disabled in the configuration. For example:

[rule.line-length-limit]
    Disabled = true

When enabling all rules you still need/can provide specific configurations for rules. The following files is an example configuration were all rules are enabled, with exception to those that are explicitly disabled, and some rules are configured with particular arguments:

severity = "warning"
confidence = 0.8
errorCode = 0
warningCode = 0

# Enable all available rules
enableAllRules = true

# Disabled rules
[rule.blank-imports]
    Disabled = true
[rule.file-header]
    Disabled = true
[rule.max-public-structs]
    Disabled = true
[rule.line-length-limit]
    Disabled = true
[rule.function-length]
    Disabled = true

# Rule tuning
[rule.argument-limit]
    Arguments = [5]
[rule.cyclomatic]
    Arguments = [10]
[rule.cognitive-complexity]
    Arguments = [7]
[rule.function-result-limit]
    Arguments = [3]

Default Configuration

The default configuration of revive can be found at defaults.toml. This will enable all rules available in golint and use their default configuration (i.e. the way they are hardcoded in golint).

revive -config defaults.toml github.com/mgechev/revive

This will use the configuration file defaults.toml, the default formatter, and will run linting over the github.com/mgechev/revive package.

Custom Configuration

revive -config config.toml -formatter friendly github.com/mgechev/revive

This will use config.toml, the friendly formatter, and will run linting over the github.com/mgechev/revive package.

Recommended Configuration

The following snippet contains the recommended revive configuration that you can use in your project:

ignoreGeneratedHeader = false
severity = "warning"
confidence = 0.8
errorCode = 0
warningCode = 0

[rule.blank-imports]
[rule.context-as-argument]
[rule.context-keys-type]
[rule.dot-imports]
[rule.error-return]
[rule.error-strings]
[rule.error-naming]
[rule.exported]
[rule.if-return]
[rule.increment-decrement]
[rule.var-naming]
[rule.var-declaration]
[rule.package-comments]
[rule.range]
[rule.receiver-naming]
[rule.time-naming]
[rule.unexported-return]
[rule.indent-error-flow]
[rule.errorf]
[rule.empty-block]
[rule.superfluous-else]
[rule.unused-parameter]
[rule.unreachable-code]
[rule.redefines-builtin-id]

Available Rules

List of all available rules. The rules ported from golint are left unchanged and indicated in the golint column.

Name	Config	Description	golint	Typed
context-keys-type	n/a	Disallows the usage of basic types in context.WithValue.	yes	yes
time-equal	n/a	Suggests to use time.Time.Equal instead of == and != for equality check time.	no	yes
time-naming	n/a	Conventions around the naming of time variables.	yes	yes
var-declaration	n/a	Reduces redundancies around variable declaration.	yes	yes
unexported-return	n/a	Warns when a public return is from unexported type.	yes	yes
errorf	n/a	Should replace errors.New(fmt.Sprintf()) with fmt.Errorf()	yes	yes
blank-imports	n/a	Disallows blank imports	yes	no
context-as-argument	n/a	context.Context should be the first argument of a function.	yes	no
dot-imports	n/a	Forbids . imports.	yes	no
error-return	n/a	The error return parameter should be last.	yes	no
error-strings	n/a	Conventions around error strings.	yes	no
error-naming	n/a	Naming of error variables.	yes	no
exported	[]string	Naming and commenting conventions on exported symbols.	yes	no
if-return	n/a	Redundant if when returning an error.	no	no
increment-decrement	n/a	Use i++ and i-- instead of i += 1 and i -= 1.	yes	no
var-naming	whitelist & blacklist of initialisms	Naming rules.	yes	no
package-comments	n/a	Package commenting conventions.	yes	no
range	n/a	Prevents redundant variables when iterating over a collection.	yes	no
receiver-naming	n/a	Conventions around the naming of receivers.	yes	no
indent-error-flow	n/a	Prevents redundant else statements.	yes	no
argument-limit	int	Specifies the maximum number of arguments a function can receive	no	no
cyclomatic	int	Sets restriction for maximum Cyclomatic complexity.	no	no
max-public-structs	int	The maximum number of public structs in a file.	no	no
file-header	string	Header which each file should have.	no	no
empty-block	n/a	Warns on empty code blocks	no	yes
superfluous-else	n/a	Prevents redundant else statements (extends indent-error-flow)	no	no
confusing-naming	n/a	Warns on methods with names that differ only by capitalization	no	no
get-return	n/a	Warns on getters that do not yield any result	no	no
modifies-parameter	n/a	Warns on assignments to function parameters	no	no
confusing-results	n/a	Suggests to name potentially confusing function results	no	no
deep-exit	n/a	Looks for program exits in funcs other than main() or init()	no	no
unused-parameter	n/a	Suggests to rename or remove unused function parameters	no	no
unreachable-code	n/a	Warns on unreachable code	no	no
add-constant	map	Suggests using constant for magic numbers and string literals	no	no
flag-parameter	n/a	Warns on boolean parameters that create a control coupling	no	no
unnecessary-stmt	n/a	Suggests removing or simplifying unnecessary statements	no	no
struct-tag	n/a	Checks common struct tags like json,xml,yaml	no	no
modifies-value-receiver	n/a	Warns on assignments to value-passed method receivers	no	yes
constant-logical-expr	n/a	Warns on constant logical expressions	no	no
bool-literal-in-expr	n/a	Suggests removing Boolean literals from logic expressions	no	no
redefines-builtin-id	n/a	Warns on redefinitions of builtin identifiers	no	no
function-result-limit	int	Specifies the maximum number of results a function can return	no	no
imports-blacklist	[]string	Disallows importing the specified packages	no	no
range-val-in-closure	n/a	Warns if range value is used in a closure dispatched as goroutine	no	no
range-val-address	n/a	Warns if address of range value is used dangerously	no	yes
waitgroup-by-value	n/a	Warns on functions taking sync.WaitGroup as a by-value parameter	no	no
atomic	n/a	Check for common mistaken usages of the sync/atomic package	no	no
empty-lines	n/a	Warns when there are heading or trailing newlines in a block	no	no
line-length-limit	int	Specifies the maximum number of characters in a line	no	no
call-to-gc	n/a	Warns on explicit call to the garbage collector	no	no
duplicated-imports	n/a	Looks for packages that are imported two or more times	no	no
import-shadowing	n/a	Spots identifiers that shadow an import	no	no
bare-return	n/a	Warns on bare returns	no	no
unused-receiver	n/a	Suggests to rename or remove unused method receivers	no	no
unhandled-error	[]string	Warns on unhandled errors returned by funcion calls	no	yes
cognitive-complexity	int	Sets restriction for maximum Cognitive complexity.	no	no
string-of-int	n/a	Warns on suspicious casts from int to string	no	yes
string-format	map	Warns on specific string literals that fail one or more user-configured regular expressions	no	no
early-return	n/a	Spots if-then-else statements that can be refactored to simplify code reading	no	no
unconditional-recursion	n/a	Warns on function calls that will lead to (direct) infinite recursion	no	no
identical-branches	n/a	Spots if-then-else statements with identical then and else branches	no	no
defer	map	Warns on some defer gotchas	no	no
unexported-naming	n/a	Warns on wrongly named un-exported symbols	no	no
function-length	n/a	Warns on functions exceeding the statements or lines max	no	no
nested-structs	n/a	Warns on structs within structs	no	no
useless-break	n/a	Warns on useless break statements in case clauses	no	no
banned-characters	n/a	Checks banned characters in identifiers	no	no
optimize-operands-order	n/a	Checks inefficient conditional expressions	no	no
use-any	n/a	Proposes to replace interface{} with its alias any	no	no

Configurable rules

Here you can find how you can configure some existing rules:

var-naming

This rule accepts two slices of strings, a whitelist and a blacklist of initialisms. By default, the rule behaves exactly as the alternative in golint but optionally, you can relax it (see golint/lint/issues/89)

[rule.var-naming]
  arguments = [["ID"], ["VM"]]

This way, revive will not warn for identifier called customId but will warn that customVm should be called customVM.

Available Formatters

This section lists all the available formatters and provides a screenshot for each one.

Friendly

Stylish

Default

The default formatter produces the same output as golint.

Plain

The plain formatter produces the same output as the default formatter and appends URL to the rule description.

Unix

The unix formatter produces the same output as the default formatter but surrounds the rules in [].

SARIF

The sarif formatter produces outputs in SARIF, for Static Analysis Results Interchange Format, a standard JSON-based format for the output of static analysis tools defined and promoted by OASIS.

Current supported version of the standard is SARIF-v2.1.0.

Extensibility

The tool can be extended with custom rules or formatters. This section contains additional information on how to implement such.

To extend the linter with a custom rule you can push it to this repository or use revive as a library (see below)

To add a custom formatter you'll have to push it to this repository or fork it. This is due to the limited -buildmode=plugin support which works only on Linux (with known issues).

Writing a Custom Rule

Each rule needs to implement the lint.Rule interface:

type Rule interface {
	Name() string
	Apply(*File, Arguments) []Failure
}

The Arguments type is an alias of the type []interface{}. The arguments of the rule are passed from the configuration file.

Example

Let's suppose we have developed a rule called BanStructNameRule which disallow us to name a structure with given identifier. We can set the banned identifier by using the TOML configuration file:

[rule.ban-struct-name]
  arguments = ["Foo"]

With the snippet above we:

• Enable the rule with name ban-struct-name. The Name() method of our rule should return a string which matches ban-struct-name.
• Configure the rule with the argument Foo. The list of arguments will be passed to Apply(*File, Arguments) together with the target file we're linting currently.

A sample rule implementation can be found here.

Using revive as a library

If a rule is specific to your use case (i.e. it is not a good candidate to be added to revive's rule set) you can add it to your own linter using revive as linting engine.

The following code shows how to use revive in your own application. In the example only one rule is added (myRule), of course, you can add as many as you need to. Your rules can be configured programmatically or with the standard revive configuration file. The full rule set of revive is also actionable by your application.

package main

import (
	"github.com/mgechev/revive/cli"
	"github.com/mgechev/revive/lint"
	"github.com/mgechev/revive/revivelib"
)

func main() {
	cli.RunRevive(revivelib.NewExtraRule(&myRule{}, lint.RuleConfig{}))
}

type myRule struct{}

func (f myRule) Name() string {
	return "myRule"
}

func (f myRule) Apply(*lint.File, lint.Arguments) []lint.Failure { ... }

You can still go further and use revive without its cli, as part of your library, or your own cli:

package mylib

import (
	"github.com/mgechev/revive/cli"
	"github.com/mgechev/revive/revivelib"
	"github.com/mgechev/revive/lint"
)

// Error checking removed for clarity
func LintMyFile(file string) {
	conf, _:= config.GetConfig("../defaults.toml")

	revive, _ := revivelib.New(
		conf,  // Configuration file
		true,  // Set exit status
		2048,  // Max open files

		// Then add as many extra rules as you need
		revivelib.NewExtraRule(&myRule{}, lint.RuleConfig{}),
	)

	failuresChan, err := revive.Lint(
 		revivelib.Include(file),
 		revivelib.Exclude("./fixtures"),
 		// You can use as many revivelib.Include or revivelib.Exclude as required
 	)
  	if err != nil {
  	 	panic("Shouldn't have failed: " + err.Error)
  	}

  	// Now let's return the formatted errors
	failures, exitCode, _ := revive.Format("stylish", failuresChan)

  	// failures is the string with all formatted lint error messages
  	// exit code is 0 if no errors, 1 if errors (unless config options change it)
  	// ... do something with them
}

type myRule struct{}

func (f myRule) Name() string {
	return "myRule"
}

func (f myRule) Apply(*lint.File, lint.Arguments) []lint.Failure { ... }

Custom Formatter

Each formatter needs to implement the following interface:

type Formatter interface {
	Format(<-chan Failure, Config) (string, error)
	Name() string
}

The Format method accepts a channel of Failure instances and the configuration of the enabled rules. The Name() method should return a string different from the names of the already existing rules. This string is used when specifying the formatter when invoking the revive CLI tool.

For a sample formatter, take a look at this file.

Speed Comparison

Compared to golint, revive performs better because it lints the files for each individual rule into a separate goroutine. Here's a basic performance benchmark on MacBook Pro Early 2013 run on kubernetes:

golint

time golint kubernetes/... > /dev/null

real    0m54.837s
user    0m57.844s
sys     0m9.146s

revive

# no type checking
time revive -config untyped.toml kubernetes/... > /dev/null

real    0m8.471s
user    0m40.721s
sys     0m3.262s

Keep in mind that if you use rules which require type checking, the performance may drop to 2x faster than golint:

# type checking enabled
time revive kubernetes/... > /dev/null

real    0m26.211s
user    2m6.708s
sys     0m17.192s

Currently, type checking is enabled by default. If you want to run the linter without type checking, remove all typed rules from the configuration file.

Overriding colorization detection

By default, revive determines whether or not to colorize its output based on whether it's connected to a TTY or not. This works for most use cases, but may not behave as expected if you use revive in a pipeline of commands, where STDOUT is being piped to another command.

To force colorization, add REVIVE_FORCE_COLOR=1 to the environment you're running in. For example:

REVIVE_FORCE_COLOR=1 revive -formatter friendly ./... | tee revive.log

Contributors

renovate[bot]	mgechev	chavacava	renovate-bot	xuri	doniacld

Clivern	bernhardreisenberger	morphy2k	butuzov	dshemin	heynemann

gsamokovarov	tymonx	sina-devel	abeltay	dvejmz	mihaitodor

markelog	tamird	shmsr	mapreal19	kulti	Aragur

s0xzwasd	derekperkins	yangdiangzb	petethepig	euank	quasilyte

grongor	jamesmaidment	jan-xyz	jefersonf	johnrichardrinehart	very-amused

ldez	mathieu-aubin	michalhisim	pa-m	paul-at-start	weastur

paco0x	rdeusser	ridvansumset	tartale	Jarema	vkrol

cce	haya14busa	jmckenzieark	techknowlogick	zeripath

License

MIT