gopls/v0.12.0-pre.1

This prerelease version of gopls contains a major rewrite of the way gopls computes and stores package information, with the goal of reducing memory usage and allowing gopls to scale to larger repositories. This change can also significantly reduce startup time the second time a workspace is opened, as gopls now uses a file-based cache to preserve derived package information across sessions. With these optimizations, gopls is finally able to fully analyze dependencies using the x/tools/go/analysis framework, resulting in improved accuracy for analysis diagnostics.

We'd love help testing this large change! If you are interested, please see below for details on what to expect, and how to report problems.

What to expect

In general, gopls@v0.12.0-pre.1 should behave similarly to gopls@v0.11.0, but use much less memory. Memory savings typically range from 50-90%, depending on the shape of your repository. Note that memory will peak higher during startup or large operations, but should ideally never go as high as with gopls@v0.11.0, and in-use memory should stabilize at a much lower number. To see details about current memory usage, start gopls with -debug=localhost:8080 and visit http://localhost:8080/memory.

As part of the rewrite, certain operations may have gotten slightly slower overall, whereas others may have gotten slightly faster (e.g. see our performance dashboard). No operation should become unusably slow.

However, it is possible that gopls' new execution model performs disproportionately worse on certain operating systems, file systems, or repositories. If you encounter this, please let us know. See below for details on how to report a problem.

Support changes

This version of gopls implements the support changes discussed in the v0.10.0 release notes. Notably, it does not support Go 1.13-1.15, and removes support for several experimental features.

How to report a problem

You can always report a gopls problem by filing an issue. We are particularly interested in any regressions you observe since gopls@v0.11.0.

If you would prefer not to report an issue on the issue tracker, you can also reach out to us via email to rfindley@google.com or adonovan@google.com.

We are aware of a number of remaining issues or regressions with the new release, tracked in the v0.12.0 milestone.

What's next?

We will continue to polish this release, and fix known regressions. We may make additional small performance improvements but do not expect large changes. Nevertheless, since this release constitutes a fundamental change to the way gopls works, we will likely cut one or more additional prereleases before the final release.

Looking beyond the v0.12.0 release, the recent redesign work paves the way for our next effort to make gopls self-configuring in more scenarios. With the previous design this would have been prohibitively expensive in memory, but soon gopls should just Do The Right Thing when you open any Go file on your machine.

gopls/v0.11.0

This is a small release containing new integrations of vulnerability analysis.

Vulnerability analysis for go.mod files can be enabled by configuring the "vulncheck" setting to "Imports". For more information on vulnerability management, see the Vulnerability Management for Go blog post.

Support changes

This release removes support for the "experimentalUseInvalidMetadata" setting, as described in the v0.10.0 release. Other settings slated for deprecation in that release remain temporarily supported, but will be removed in v0.12.0.

New Features

Analyzing dependencies for vulnerabilities

This release offers two different options for detecting vulnerabilities in dependencies. Both are backed by the Go vulnerability database (https://vuln.go.dev) and complement each other.

• Imports-based scanning, enabled by the "vulncheck": "Imports" setting, reports vulnerabilities by scanning the set of packages imported in the workspace. This is fast, but may report more false positives.
• Integration of the golang.org/x/vuln/cmd/govulncheck command-line tool performs a more precise analysis based on-call graph reachability, with fewer false positives. Because it is slower to compute, it must be manually triggered by using "Run govulncheck to verify" code actions or the "codelenses.run_govulncheck" code lens on go.mod files.

vulncheck.mp4

Checking for vulnerabilities using VS Code Go v0.37.0 and Gopls v0.11.0

Additional checks for the loopclosure analyzer

The loopclosure analyzer, which reports problematic references from a nested function to a variable of an enclosing loop, has been improved to catch more cases. In particular, it now reports when subtests run in parallel with the loop, a mistake that often results in all but the final test case being skipped.

Configuration changes

• The "vulncheck" setting controls vulnerability analysis based on the Go vulnerability database. If set to "Imports", gopls will compute diagnostics related to vulnerabilities in dependencies, and will present them in go.mod files.
• The "codelenses.run_govulncheck" setting controls the presence of code lenses that run the govulncheck command, which takes longer but produces more accurate vulnerability reporting based on call-graph reachability.

Bug fixes

This version of gopls includes fixes to several bugs, notably:

• Unnecessary package reloading when changing branches (golang/go#57053).
• A couple of rare crashes (golang/go#55837 and golang/go#56450).
• A memory leak following file changes (golang/go#54816).

A full list of all issues fixed can be found in the gopls/v0.11.0 milestone.
To report a new problem, please file a new issue at https://go.dev/issues/new.

Thank you to our contributors

@Arsen6331, @SN9NV, @adonovan, @bcmills, @dle8, @findleyr, @hyangah, @pjweinbgo, @suzmue

gopls/v0.10.1

This release contains a fix for golang/go#56505: a new crash during method completion on variables of type *error.

Thank you to everyone who filed a crash report.

gopls/v0.10.0

This release contains initial support for standalone packages and package renaming. Please see below for more details.

We are also changing our release policy to better align with semver.

Support changes

This version of gopls contains changes to our release policy, deprecates support for some older Go versions, and deprecates support for several experimental features.

New release policy

As described in golang/go#55267, we are tightening our release policy to better follow semver, increase stability, and reduce release-related toil. Significant new features will only be introduced in *.*.0 patch versions, and subsequent patch releases will consist only of bugfixes. For example, this version (v0.10.0) introduces several new features, described below. Subsequent v0.10.* releases will contain only bugfixes.

Final support for Go 1.13-1.15

Consistent with the above release policy and our stated support window, the v0.10.* minor version will be the final set of releases to support being used with Go 1.13-1.15. See golang/go#52982 for details.

Gopls will pop up a warning if it resolves a version of the go command that is older than 1.16. Starting with gopls@v0.11.0, gopls will cease to function when used with a go command with a version older than 1.16.

Deprecated experimental features

The following experimental features are deprecated, and will be removed in gopls@v0.11.0:

• experimentalWorkspaceModule (golang/go#52897): this feature has been replaced by go.work files. See our documentation for information on how to use go.work files to work on multiple modules.
• experimentalWatchedFileDelay (golang/go#55268): LSP clients should instead be responsible for buffering workspace/didChangeWatchedFiles notifications.
• experimentalUseInvalidMetadata (golang/go#54180): we are going to focus instead on improving diagnostics for broken workspaces.

New Features

Support for "standalone packages"

Gopls now recognizes certain files as "standalone main packages", meaning they should be interpreted as main packages consisting of a single file. To do this, gopls looks for packages named main containing a single build constraint that matches one of the tags configured by the new standaloneTags setting.

This enables cross references and other features when working in a file such as the example below that contains a //go:build ignore build constraint.

(preview) Support for package renaming

This version of gopls contains initial support for renaming packages (golang/go#41567). This is a work in progress and has a surprising number of edge cases. Additionally, this feature depends heavily on LSP client behavior: renaming a package involves moving the underlying package directory, which may behave differently in different editors. Please try it out, and report your experience at golang/go#56184.

To rename a package, initiate a rename request on the package clause of a file in the package:

When this renaming is applied, gopls will adjust other package files accordingly, rename the package directory, and update import paths referencing the current package or any nested package in the renamed directory.

Method information in hover

Hovering over a type now shows a summary of its methods.

Support for Go 1.19 doc comment syntax

This version of gopls supports the new doc comment syntax added in Go 1.19. See https://go.dev/doc/comment for more details.

New diff algorithm

This version of gopls uses an entirely new diff algorithm behind the scenes, to compute the text edits that gopls sends to the LSP client. We hope that this fixes a number of bugs in the old diff implementation, but for the most part you should not notice any effect of this change. If you do experience problems related to text edits, please report an issue and set the "newDiff" setting to "old" to revert to the old diff algorithm.

Configuration changes

This release changes the default value of the "directoryFilters" setting from ["-node_modules"] to ["-**/node_modules"], following support for wildcard syntax.

Bug fixes

This version of gopls includes several bug fixes, notably:

• golang/go#43144: find references doesn't always search tests
• golang/go#54816: extract function action doesn't work if the first line is a comment
• golang/go#55293: textDocument/definition is slow in large codebase

A full list of all issues fixed can be found in the gopls/v0.10.0 milestone.
To report a new problem, please file a new issue at https://go.dev/issues/new.

Thank you to our contributors!

@adonovan, @brianpursley, @findleyr, @hyangah, @pjweinbgo, @suzmue, and @dle8!

gopls/v0.10.0-pre.2

The following release notes are for a pre-release version of gopls, to be released as gopls@v0.10.0. To install this prerelease, please run the following:

go install golang.org/x/tools/gopls@v0.10.0-pre.2

Note: These changes have since been released as gopls@v0.10.0. Please see the release notes for that version for more information.

gopls/v0.9.5

This release updates the gopls vulncheck command (which backs the preview of vulncheck integration in VS Code) with the latest schema of the Go vulnerability database. See the Vulnerability Management for Go blog post for more context.

Additionally, this release includes a bugfix for redundant reloads following go.mod changes (golang/go#54473).

gopls/v0.9.4

This release fixes an unfortunate bug in a new vet analysis in the gopls@v0.9.2 release. Specifically, a stray print statement in a new analyzer for the invalid time format string "2006-02-01", which corrupts gopls' communication over STDIN/STDOUT.

This only affects projects using that bad format string, and only when a file in the affected package is open. Thanks to @Phadin for accurately identifying this bug so quickly after it was introduced. Issue golang/go#54459 tracks our follow-up to prevent similar regressions from making it into future gopls releases.

On a positive note, here is the new vet analysis in action. Clearly it will catch real bugs!

gopls/v0.9.3

Move fast and fix things... it appears that v0.9.2 exposed a latent crasher in gopls (golang/go#54395). This crash occurs when a new workspace is incorrectly configured, and so is likely to be rather confusing for new users. On that basis, the fix warranted a patch release.

As always, thank you for filing issues!

gopls/v0.9.2

This release contains many bug fixes, particularly related to problems that would require restarting gopls.

Note about network usage: among these fixes was a change to allow network usage when reloading the workspace. Reloading occurs when a go.mod, go.sum, or go.work file changes on disk. In the past, gopls would only allow network during the first workspace load. This resulted in confusing behavior when, for example, a new dependency is added to a go.mod file and gopls could not load it, but loading succeeded on restart. See #54069 for more details.

Configuration changes

directoryFilters at arbitrary depth

The "directoryFilters" setting now supports excluding directories at arbitrary depth, using the ** operator. (note that for v0.9.2, the default value for this setting is still ["-node_modules]". In the next release, this will change to ["-**/node_modules"]).

Bug fixes and Performance improvements...

This release contains the following notable bug fixes / performance improvements:

• Additional change optimization - Following up on the work to optimize change processing from the v0.9.0 release, this release contains additional optimizations that result in around 50% faster change processing (measured via edits in the Kubernetes repo).
• Fix for a long-standing memory leak - #53780 fixed a long-standing bug that caused gopls to hold on to its initial state, gradually leaking memory as state changed during the editing session.
• Fewer restarts - This release contains many fixes for cache-invalidation bugs that would cause gopls to get confused and require restarting. Additionally, see the note at top about enabling the network when reloading the workspace. We believe we are close to our goal that restarting gopls should never be required to fix workspace errors. If you encounter such a bug, please file an issue!

A full list of all issues fixed can be found in the gopls/v0.9.2 milestone.
To report a new problem, please file a new issue at https://go.dev/issues/new.

Thank you to our contributors!

Thank you for your contribution, @alandonovan, @antoineco, @dle8, @euroelessar, @findleyr, @hyangah, @jamalc, @mssdvd, @pjweinbgo, @rentziass, and @suzmue!

What's next

The next planned gopls release is v0.10.0. We’re excited about features and improvements on the horizon, for example:

• Package renaming (#41567)
• More accurate static-analysis (#48738)
• Improved support for the new 1.19 doc comment format (#54260)
• Making it easier to work with go.work files (many issues, for example #53880 or #54261)

gopls/v0.9.1

This release fixes a regression in the v0.9.0 release: a crash when running the go:generate codelens (golang/go#53781).

Thank you to all those who filed crash reports, and apologies for the breakage!