Settings

This document describes the global settings for gopls inside the editor. The settings block will be called "gopls" and contains a collection of controls for gopls that the editor is not expected to understand or control. These settings can also be configured differently per workspace folder.

In VSCode, this would be a section in your settings.json file that might look like this:

  "gopls": {
    "ui.completion.usePlaceholders": true,
     ...
  },

Officially supported

Below is the list of settings that are officially supported for gopls.

Any settings that are experimental or for debugging purposes are marked as such.

To enable all experimental features, use allExperiments: true. You will still be able to independently override specific experimental features.

Build

buildFlags []string

buildFlags is the set of flags passed on to the build system when invoked. It is applied to queries like go list, which is used when discovering files. The most common use is to set -tags.

Default: [].

env map[string]string

env adds environment variables to external commands run by gopls, most notably go list.

Default: {}.

directoryFilters []string

directoryFilters can be used to exclude unwanted directories from the workspace. By default, all directories are included. Filters are an operator, + to include and - to exclude, followed by a path prefix relative to the workspace folder. They are evaluated in order, and the last filter that applies to a path controls whether it is included. The path prefix can be empty, so an initial - excludes everything.

DirectoryFilters also supports the ** operator to match 0 or more directories.

Examples:

Exclude node_modules at current depth: -node_modules

Exclude node_modules at any depth: -**/node_modules

Include only project_a: - (exclude everything), +project_a

Include only project_a, but not node_modules inside it: -, +project_a, -project_a/node_modules

Default: ["-**/node_modules"].

templateExtensions []string

templateExtensions gives the extensions of file names that are treateed as template files. (The extension is the part of the file name after the final dot.)

Default: [].

memoryMode enum

This setting is experimental and may be deleted.

memoryMode controls the tradeoff gopls makes between memory usage and correctness.

Values other than Normal are untested and may break in surprising ways.

Must be one of:

  • "DegradeClosed": In DegradeClosed mode, gopls will collect less information about packages without open files. As a result, features like Find References and Rename will miss results in such packages.
  • "Normal"

Default: "Normal".

expandWorkspaceToModule bool

This setting is experimental and may be deleted.

expandWorkspaceToModule instructs gopls to adjust the scope of the workspace to find the best available module root. gopls first looks for a go.mod file in any parent directory of the workspace folder, expanding the scope to that directory if it exists. If no viable parent directory is found, gopls will check if there is exactly one child directory containing a go.mod file, narrowing the scope to that directory if it exists.

Default: true.

experimentalWorkspaceModule bool

This setting is experimental and may be deleted.

experimentalWorkspaceModule opts a user into the experimental support for multi-module workspaces.

Deprecated: this feature is deprecated and will be removed in a future version of gopls (https://go.dev/issue/55331).

Default: false.

experimentalPackageCacheKey bool

This setting is experimental and may be deleted.

experimentalPackageCacheKey controls whether to use a coarser cache key for package type information to increase cache hits. This setting removes the user's environment, build flags, and working directory from the cache key, which should be a safe change as all relevant inputs into the type checking pass are already hashed into the key. This is temporarily guarded by an experiment because caching behavior is subtle and difficult to comprehensively test.

Default: true.

allowModfileModifications bool

This setting is experimental and may be deleted.

allowModfileModifications disables -mod=readonly, allowing imports from out-of-scope modules. This option will eventually be removed.

Default: false.

allowImplicitNetworkAccess bool

This setting is experimental and may be deleted.

allowImplicitNetworkAccess disables GOPROXY=off, allowing implicit module downloads rather than requiring user action. This option will eventually be removed.

Default: false.

standaloneTags []string

standaloneTags specifies a set of build constraints that identify individual Go source files that make up the entire main package of an executable.

A common example of standalone main files is the convention of using the directive //go:build ignore to denote files that are not intended to be included in any package, for example because they are invoked directly by the developer using go run.

Gopls considers a file to be a standalone main file if and only if it has package name “main” and has a build directive of the exact form “//go:build tag” or “// +build tag”, where tag is among the list of tags configured by this setting. Notably, if the build constraint is more complicated than a simple tag (such as the composite constraint //go:build tag && go1.18), the file is not considered to be a standalone main file.

This setting is only supported when gopls is built with Go 1.16 or later.

Default: ["ignore"].

Formatting

local string

local is the equivalent of the goimports -local flag, which puts imports beginning with this string after third-party packages. It should be the prefix of the import path whose imports should be grouped separately.

Default: "".

gofumpt bool

gofumpt indicates if we should run gofumpt formatting.

Default: false.

UI

codelenses map[string]bool

codelenses overrides the enabled/disabled state of code lenses. See the “Code Lenses” section of the Settings page for the list of supported lenses.

Example Usage:

"gopls": {
...
  "codelenses": {
    "generate": false,  // Don't show the `go generate` lens.
    "gc_details": true  // Show a code lens toggling the display of gc's choices.
  }
...
}

Default: {"gc_details":false,"generate":true,"regenerate_cgo":true,"tidy":true,"upgrade_dependency":true,"vendor":true}.

semanticTokens bool

This setting is experimental and may be deleted.

semanticTokens controls whether the LSP server will send semantic tokens to the client.

Default: false.

noSemanticString bool

This setting is experimental and may be deleted.

noSemanticString turns off the sending of the semantic token ‘string’

Default: false.

noSemanticNumber bool

This setting is experimental and may be deleted.

noSemanticNumber turns off the sending of the semantic token ‘number’

Default: false.

Completion

usePlaceholders bool

placeholders enables placeholders for function parameters or struct fields in completion responses.

Default: false.

completionBudget time.Duration

This setting is for debugging purposes only.

completionBudget is the soft latency goal for completion requests. Most requests finish in a couple milliseconds, but in some cases deep completions can take much longer. As we use up our budget we dynamically reduce the search scope to ensure we return timely results. Zero means unlimited.

Default: "100ms".

matcher enum

This is an advanced setting and should not be configured by most gopls users.

matcher sets the algorithm that is used when calculating completion candidates.

Must be one of:

  • "CaseInsensitive"
  • "CaseSensitive"
  • "Fuzzy"

Default: "Fuzzy".

experimentalPostfixCompletions bool

This setting is experimental and may be deleted.

experimentalPostfixCompletions enables artificial method snippets such as “someSlice.sort!”.

Default: true.

Diagnostic

analyses map[string]bool

analyses specify analyses that the user would like to enable or disable. A map of the names of analysis passes that should be enabled/disabled. A full list of analyzers that gopls uses can be found in analyzers.md.

Example Usage:

...
"analyses": {
  "unreachable": false, // Disable the unreachable analyzer.
  "unusedparams": true  // Enable the unusedparams analyzer.
}
...

Default: {}.

staticcheck bool

This setting is experimental and may be deleted.

staticcheck enables additional analyses from staticcheck.io. These analyses are documented on Staticcheck's website.

Default: false.

annotations map[string]bool

This setting is experimental and may be deleted.

annotations specifies the various kinds of optimization diagnostics that should be reported by the gc_details command.

Can contain any of:

  • "bounds" controls bounds checking diagnostics.
  • "escape" controls diagnostics about escape choices.
  • "inline" controls diagnostics about inlining choices.
  • "nil" controls nil checks.

Default: {"bounds":true,"escape":true,"inline":true,"nil":true}.

diagnosticsDelay time.Duration

This is an advanced setting and should not be configured by most gopls users.

diagnosticsDelay controls the amount of time that gopls waits after the most recent file modification before computing deep diagnostics. Simple diagnostics (parsing and type-checking) are always run immediately on recently modified packages.

This option must be set to a valid duration string, for example "250ms".

Default: "250ms".

experimentalWatchedFileDelay time.Duration

This setting is experimental and may be deleted.

experimentalWatchedFileDelay controls the amount of time that gopls waits for additional workspace/didChangeWatchedFiles notifications to arrive, before processing all such notifications in a single batch. This is intended for use by LSP clients that don't support their own batching of file system notifications.

This option must be set to a valid duration string, for example "100ms".

Deprecated: this setting is deprecated and will be removed in a future version of gopls (https://go.dev/issue/55332)

Default: "0s".

Documentation

hoverKind enum

hoverKind controls the information that appears in the hover text. SingleLine and Structured are intended for use only by authors of editor plugins.

Must be one of:

  • "FullDocumentation"
  • "NoDocumentation"
  • "SingleLine"
  • "Structured" is an experimental setting that returns a structured hover format. This format separates the signature from the documentation, so that the client can do more manipulation of these fields.
    This should only be used by clients that support this behavior.
  • "SynopsisDocumentation"

Default: "FullDocumentation".

linkTarget string

linkTarget controls where documentation links go. It might be one of:

  • "godoc.org"
  • "pkg.go.dev"

If company chooses to use its own godoc.org, its address can be used as well.

Modules matching the GOPRIVATE environment variable will not have documentation links in hover.

Default: "pkg.go.dev".

linksInHover bool

linksInHover toggles the presence of links to documentation in hover.

Default: true.

Inlayhint

hints map[string]bool

This setting is experimental and may be deleted.

hints specify inlay hints that users want to see. A full list of hints that gopls uses can be found in inlayHints.md.

Default: {}.

Navigation

importShortcut enum

importShortcut specifies whether import statements should link to documentation or go to definitions.

Must be one of:

  • "Both"
  • "Definition"
  • "Link"

Default: "Both".

symbolMatcher enum

This is an advanced setting and should not be configured by most gopls users.

symbolMatcher sets the algorithm that is used when finding workspace symbols.

Must be one of:

  • "CaseInsensitive"
  • "CaseSensitive"
  • "FastFuzzy"
  • "Fuzzy"

Default: "FastFuzzy".

symbolStyle enum

This is an advanced setting and should not be configured by most gopls users.

symbolStyle controls how symbols are qualified in symbol responses.

Example Usage:

"gopls": {
...
  "symbolStyle": "Dynamic",
...
}

Must be one of:

  • "Dynamic" uses whichever qualifier results in the highest scoring match for the given symbol query. Here a “qualifier” is any “/” or “.” delimited suffix of the fully qualified symbol. i.e. “to/pkg.Foo.Field” or just “Foo.Field”.
  • "Full" is fully qualified symbols, i.e. “path/to/pkg.Foo.Field”.
  • "Package" is package qualified symbols i.e. “pkg.Foo.Field”.

Default: "Dynamic".

verboseOutput bool

This setting is for debugging purposes only.

verboseOutput enables additional debug logging.

Default: false.

newDiff string

newDiff enables the new diff implementation. If this is “both”, for now both diffs will be run and statistics will be generated in a file in $TMPDIR. This is a risky setting; help in trying it is appreciated. If it is “old” the old implementation is used, and if it is “new”, just the new implementation is used. This setting will eventually be deleted, once gopls has fully migrated to the new diff algorithm.

Default: ‘both’.

Code Lenses

These are the code lenses that gopls currently supports. They can be enabled and disabled using the codelenses setting, documented above. Their names and features are subject to change.

Toggle gc_details

Identifier: gc_details

Toggle the calculation of gc annotations.

Run go generate

Identifier: generate

Runs go generate for a given directory.

Regenerate cgo

Identifier: regenerate_cgo

Regenerates cgo definitions.

Run vulncheck (experimental)

Identifier: run_vulncheck_exp

Run vulnerability check (govulncheck).

Run test(s) (legacy)

Identifier: test

Runs go test for a specific set of test or benchmark functions.

Run go mod tidy

Identifier: tidy

Runs go mod tidy for a module.

Upgrade a dependency

Identifier: upgrade_dependency

Upgrades a dependency in the go.mod file for a module.

Run go mod vendor

Identifier: vendor

Runs go mod vendor for a module.