Go fmt on a whole source tree

Question

I have a project currently organized something like this:

~/code/go
         /bin
         /pkg
         /src
             /proj/main.go
                  /some_package/package.go
                  /some_other_package/some_other_package.go

Now if I want to use the go fmt tool on my whole project it seems that the only way is to do it separately for each directory in my projects source tree:

go fmt proj
go fmt proj/package
go fmt proj/some_other_package

Is there some way to tell the fmt command to run on the whole source tree?

Interesting. The `go fmt` documentation I have says it's recursive, but I can observe that it isn't. — icktoofay, Nov 10 '12 at 04:24

tux21b · Accepted Answer · 2012-11-10T11:53:15.717

140

You can use three dots (...) as a wildcard. So for example, the following command will format all github.com packages:

go fmt github.com/...

This wildcard also works with other go commands like go list, go get and so. There is no need to remember such an ugly find command.

edited Nov 10 '12 at 11:53

answered Nov 10 '12 at 11:47

tux21b

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@Chris, Using `...` as the wildcard is explained [there](http://golang.org/cmd/go/#Description_of_package_lists) – kostix Nov 18 '12 at 11:31
1

I wonder why it is done this way as opposed to just using standard wildcard patterns like : `github.com/*` or globbing syntax like `github.com/**/*.go` – chakrit Jul 22 '13 at 14:00

score 92 · Answer 2 · answered Nov 11 '12 at 18:10

92

If you use gofmt instead of go fmt, it's recursive. For example, following command

gofmt -s -w .

(notice the little dot at end) recursively formats, simplifies, and saves result into every file under current directory. I have a shell alias gf defined as gofmt -s -w . and find it quite handy.

Try gofmt -l . (list files whose formatting differs from gofmt's) first if you want :-)

answered Nov 11 '12 at 18:10

Song Gao

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`gofmt -l -s -w .` yields a behavior similar to `go fmt` (saving the files & printing the files that have been modified). Without the `-l` flag, the file names are not printed. – cr7pt0gr4ph7 Feb 10 '15 at 09:21
2

`git ls-files | grep ".go$" | xargs gofmt -l -s -w` to only do this to source files which are checked in to your repo. – Dave Aug 04 '16 at 14:45
does that affect only go files or all files in the directory? – CME64 May 14 '19 at 21:58

score 50 · Answer 3 · answered Mar 20 '18 at 21:15

50

Also, you can try to run command:

go fmt ./...

from your project directory.

answered Mar 20 '18 at 21:15

cn007b

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Doesn't work if `.` is a symbolic link. I found [Song's answer](https://stackoverflow.com/a/13333931/1102648) works with symlink. – ssgao Jan 06 '20 at 16:31

score 6 · Answer 4 · answered Nov 10 '12 at 04:17

6

find proj -type f -iregex '.*\.go' -exec go fmt '{}' +

Explanation

find proj: find everything in this directory...
- -type f: ...that is a file
- -iregex '.*\.go': ...and case-insensitively matches the regular expression .*\.go
...and execute go fmt followed by as many matched files as the operating system can handle passing to an executable in one go.

answered Nov 10 '12 at 04:17

icktoofay

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Nice command, it's too bad the fmt tool can't do that automatically. I did make a couple of tweaks though: `find src` instead of `find proj` to run it from `$GOROOT`, and `\;` instead of `+` since the fmt tool doesn't work when it's given files that are in different directories. – Chris Nov 10 '12 at 04:52
Useful command, but I would like to do something like this `git status | egrep '\.go$' .... ` and use your command how can I do that? – Cristian Nov 08 '16 at 14:05
@Cristian: You'll probably need to do some processing with `awk` or `cut` or something to munge it down to just a list of file names; once that's done, though, you should be able to use `xargs`, e.g. `... | xargs go fmt`. – icktoofay Dec 16 '16 at 06:21

score 5 · Answer 5 · answered Nov 24 '20 at 09:13

5

if you are using GoLand IDE, right click on project and you will find Go Tools.

answered Nov 24 '20 at 09:13

sgauri

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score 3 · Answer 6 · answered Jun 06 '19 at 11:43

The command gofmt ./... mentioned by some, does not work on Windows (at least on my Win7).

Instead of it, I used gofmt -d .\ which works recursively. I use the -d flag because I want to list the changes I need to make in order to pass the check.

NB: golint ./... does work on Windows, just gofmt ./... doesn't.

Go fmt on a whole source tree

6 Answers6

Explanation

Linked