Go for Visual Studio Code

Slack

The VS Code Go extension provides rich language support for the Go programming language.

📣 Gopls, the official Go language server, is now enabled in VS Code by default. Gopls replaces several legacy tools to provide IDE features while editing Go code. See issue 1037 for more information.

Quick Start

Welcome! 👋🏻
Whether you are new to Go or an experienced Go developer, we hope this extension fits your needs and enhances your development experience.

  • Step 1. If you haven't done so already, install Go and the VS Code Go extension.
  • Step 2. To activate the extension, open any directory or workspace containing Go code. Once activated, the Go status bar will appear in the bottom left corner of the window and show the recognized Go version.
  • Step 3. The extension depends on a set of extra command-line tools. If they are missing, the extension will show the “⚠️ Analysis Tools Missing” warning. Click the notification to complete the installation.

You are ready to Go :-)    🎉🎉🎉

Please be sure to learn more about the many features of this extension, as well as how to customize them. Take a look at Troubleshooting and Help for further guidance.

If you are new to Go, this article provides the overview on Go code organization and basic go commands. Watch “Getting started with VS Code Go” for an explanation of how to build your first Go application using VS Code Go.

Features

This extension provides many features, including IntelliSense, code navigation, and code editing support. It also shows diagnostics as you work and provides enhanced support for testing and debugging your programs. See the full feature breakdown for more details and to learn how to tune its behavior.

In addition to integrated editing features, the extension provides several commands for working with Go files. You can access any of these by opening the Command Palette (Ctrl+Shift+P on Linux/Windows and Cmd+Shift+P on Mac), and then typing in the command name. See the full list of commands provided by this extension.

⚠️ Note: the default syntax highlighting for Go files is provided by a TextMate rule embedded in VS Code, not by this extension.

Tools

The extension uses a few command-line tools developed by the Go community. In particular, go, gopls, and dlv must be installed for this extension to work correctly. See the tools documentation for a complete list of tools the extension depends on.

In order to locate these command-line tools, the extension searches GOPATH/bin and directories specified in the PATH environment variable (or Path on Windows) with which the VS Code process has started. If the tools are not found, the extension will prompt you to install the missing tools and show the “⚠️ Analysis Tools Missing” warning in the bottom right corner. Please install them by responding to the warning notification, or by manually running the Go: Install/Update Tools command.

Setting up your workspace

Go modules are how Go manages dependencies in recent versions of Go. Modules replace the GOPATH-based approach to specifying which source files are used in a given build, and they are the default build mode in go1.16+. While this extension continues to support both Go modules and GOPATH modes, we highly recommend Go development in module mode. If you are working on existing projects, please consider migrating to modules.

Unlike the traditional GOPATH mode, module mode does not require the workspace to be located under GOPATH nor to use a specific structure. A module is defined by a directory tree of Go source files with a go.mod file in the tree's root directory.

Your project may involve one or more modules. If you are working with multiple modules or uncommon project layouts, you will need to configure your workspace by using Workspace Folders. Please see this documentation about supported workspace layouts.

Customization

The extension needs no configuration and should work out of the box. However, you may wish to adjust settings to customize its behavior. Please see the settings documentation for a comprehensive list of settings. See advanced topics for further customizations and unique use cases.

Troubleshooting

If the extension isn't working as you expect, you can take a look at our troubleshooting guides. There is one for general troubleshooting, and another specifically for troubleshooting the debugging feature.

Ask for help

If the troubleshooting guides did not resolve the issue, please reach out to us by filing an issue, starting a GitHub discussion, or by asking a question in the Gophers Slack. We hang out in the #vscode channel!

Also, you can take a look at learn.go.dev and golang.org/help for more general guidance on using Go.

Preview version

If you'd like to get early access to new features and bug fixes, you can use the nightly build of this extension. Learn how to install it in by reading the Go Nightly documentation.

Contributing

We welcome your contributions and thank you for working to improve the Go development experience in VS Code. If you would like to help work on the VS Code Go extension, please see our contribution guide. It explains how to build and run the extension locally, and describes the process of sending a contribution.

Code of Conduct

This project follows the Go Community Code of Conduct. If you encounter a conduct-related issue, please mail conduct@golang.org.

License

MIT