refactoring in Go - rather pleasant actually...

12 Feb 2013

I’ve just finished refactoring a large Go program, and the process was rather…. pleasant.

Static typing catches all those obscure errors I wouldn’t think about in a scripting language (Python, Perl, Ruby, etc). My process is:

• type :make in vim (I have a dummy Makefile in my Go project just for vim)
• vim jumps cursor to error (vim quickfix list)
• “oh, I shouldn’t do that” - fix (type type type)
• start again

Finish rather sooner than expected, run tests, smile in knowledge program is working properly.

Update

To quickly setup the make command for Go, type this in a Vim window:

:setlocal makeprg=go\ build\ \.

Or even better configure vim via your ~/.vimrc, for example:

autocmd BufRead *_test.go setlocal makeprg=go\ test\ \.
autocmd BufRead *.go setlocal makeprg=go\ test\ \./..

Thanks Martin for the comment!