Go Porject settings in VS Code

For now VS code is a great tool for develop Go project without much efforts to config. For most simple Go project you only need to install the Go plugin to turn your VS Code into Go IDE. I have noted some problems I have encountered when I setup Go in VS Code.

For the project using Go 1.11 Modules

It’s a bit tricky to setup. Because we need set environment virable GO111MODULE=on and build flag: -mod=vendor

// .vscode/launch.json for Go debug
{
    "version": "0.2.0",
    "configurations": [
        
        {
            "name": "Launch Package",
            "type": "go",
            "request": "launch",
            "mode": "debug",
            "program": "${workspaceFolder}",
            "env": {"GO111MODULE": "on"},
            "buildFlags": "-mod=vendor",
            "args": []
        }
    ]
}

Then you can run the Go project by clicking the debug button in vscode.

You can also change the .vscode/settings.json and add the go.buildFlags and go.toolsEnvVars

For the go test, you can set go.testEnvVars and go.testFlags. But it does not work for the test for the project which forked from the original project. For this situation please check below article.

go test for the forks project

If you working on the Go project using git fork workflow. You forked your project from some organization. And your project path may look like this:

$GOPATH/src/github.com/your-username/project-name

No matter how you run the go test against a function or a file, even you change the go test setting in .vscode/settings.json you may received error tell you it can’t find the package at some path.

So you can solve this question by change your project path from above to original organization, like below:

$GOPATH/src/github.com/original-org/project-name

Thanks to @msoliman to help me solve this problem.

Disable ‘format on save’

VS Code has enabled go format on save default. For most case, disable the go format on save is not recommended. But if you work on the legacy project or some project not put linter and format into workflow in the beginning. You may want to disable this feature.

It seems vscode-go or vscode have the bug with current version Version 1.35.1 (1.35.1) go plugin version: 0.11.0 VS code can’t disable “formatOnSave”. And here is a alternative solution:

Open Shortcuts editor and change saveWithoutFormatting to cmd+s and change save to cmd+k s:

{
  "key": "cmd+s",
  "command": "workbench.action.files.saveWithoutFormatting"
}

{
  "key": "cmd+k s",
  "command": "workbench.action.files.save"
}

And we should using below solution to achive this effect. But it’s not working for current vscode.

The solution is to add this property to the .vscode/settings.json

*May not work for version 1.35.1 (1.35.1) go plugin version: 0.11.0

    "[go]": {
        "editor.formatOnSave": false
    }