This is go-mode, the Emacs mode for editing Go code.

It is a complete rewrite of the go-mode that shipped with Go 1.0.3 and before, and was part of Go 1.1 until Go 1.3. Beginning with Go 1.4, editor integration will not be part of the Go distribution anymore, making this repository the canonical place for go-mode.

Features

In addition to normal features, such as fontification and indentation, and close integration with familiar Emacs functionality (for example syntax-based navigation like beginning-of-defun), go-mode comes with the following extra features to provide an improved experience:

• Integration with gofmt by providing a command of the same name, and gofmt-before-save, which can be used in a hook to format Go buffers before saving them.
  • Setting the gofmt-command variable also allows using goimports.
• Integration with godoc via the functions godoc and godoc-at-point.
• Integration with the Playground
  • go-play-buffer and go-play-region to send code to the Playground
  • go-download-play to download a Playground entry into a new buffer
• Managing imports
  • A function for jumping to the file's imports (go-goto-imports)
  • A function for adding imports, including tab completion (go-import-add, bound to C-c C-a)
  • A function for removing or commenting unused imports (go-remove-unused-imports)
• Integration with godef
  • godef-describe (C-c C-d) to describe expressions
  • godef-jump (C-c C-j) and godef-jump-other-window (C-x 4 C-c C-j) to jump to declarations
  • This requires you to install godef via go get code.google.com/p/rog-go/exp/cmd/godef.
• Basic support for imenu (functions and variables)
• Built-in support for displaying code coverage as calculated by go test (go-coverage)

Installation

MELPA

The recommended way of installing go-mode is via ELPA, the Emacs package manager, and the MELPA repository, which provides an up-to-date version of go-mode.

If you're not familiar with ELPA yet, consider reading this guide.

Manual

To install go-mode manually, place go-mode.el and go-mode-autoloads.el in a directory of your choice, add it to your load path and require 'go-mode-autoloads:

(add-to-list 'load-path "/place/where/you/put/it/")
(require 'go-mode-autoloads)

Either evaluate both statements with C-x C-e, or restart Emacs.

As a side note, normally the autoloads file shouldn't be part of the package, as it's supposed to be automatically generated by ELPA, or manually by the user with update-file-autoloads. go-mode includes said file because it used to when it was part of the Go distribution and this makes upgrading easier for some people.

Other extensions

There are several third party extensions that can enhance the Go experience in Emacs.

Syntax/error checking

There are two ways of using flymake with Go:

1. goflymake, which internally uses go build to capture all errors that a regular compilation would also produce
2. flymake-go for a more lightweight solution that only uses gofmt and as such is only able to catch syntax errors. Unlike goflymake, however, it does not require an additional executable.

Additionally, there is flycheck, a modern replacement for flymake, which comes with built-in support for Go. In addition to using go build or gofmt, it also has support for go vet, golint and errcheck.

Auto completion

For auto completion, take a look at gocode.

eldoc

https://github.com/syohex/emacs-go-eldoc provides eldoc functionality for go-mode.

Snippets

I maintain a set of YASnippet snippets for go-mode at https://github.com/dominikh/yasnippet-go

Integration with errcheck

https://github.com/dominikh/go-errcheck.el provides integration with errcheck.

Donations

I am accepting donations for go-mode, but it has to be said that even though I am its primary developer, there are several third party contributions with varying complexity. Donations would be towards me, Dominik Honnef, and not go-mode as a whole.