xgoimports

• Are you a Golang developer?
• Do you like your imports sorted (goimports-style)?
• Are you tired of IDEs breaking your imports so bad that autoformatter cannot fix them?

If so, better-goimports will help you! It’s a drop-in replacement for goimports that does one thing goimports doesn’t: it makes sure your imports are ALWAYS formatted as pretty as it ever gets!

Why?

As Go developers we often would like to have our imports grouped by origin: standard library, then third-party libraries and at last - local packages.

But mainaining this order is a pain, especially when your imports are separated by empty lines - and auto-importing in IDE is quite notorious to produce such a mess:

// "github.com/myorg/myproject" is mean to be a local package.
import (
    "github.com/myorg/myproject/subpkg1"

    "github.com/myorg/myproject/subpkg2"
    "go.uber.org/atomic"

    "github.com/rs/zerolog/log"

    "fmt"
)

Here is where xgoimports comes in handy:

Usage

xgoimports is a drop-in replacement for goimports, so you can use it in the same way:

xgoimports -w yourfile.go

It’s recommmended to use it with -local flag to specify your local packages, so they are grouped together:

xgoimports -local github.com/yourusername/yourproject -w -format-only yourfile.go

Often, you would want to run it on all your Go files in the project:

xgoimports -local github.com/yourusername/yourproject -w -format-only $(find . -type f -name '*.go' -not -path "./vendor/*")

Handy snippets

#!/bin/sh
GO_FILES="$(find . -type f -name '*.go' -not -path "./vendor/*")"
LOCAL_PACKAGES="github.com/yourusername/yourproject"

goimports -local "$LOCAL_PACKAGES" -w -format-only $GO_FILES

GO_FILES       := $(shell find . -type f -name '*.go' -not -path "./vendor/*")
LOCAL_PACKAGES := github.com/yourusername/yourproject

format:
    @xgoimports -local $(LOCAL_PACKAGES) -w -format-only $(GO_FILES)

{
    "editor.formatOnSave": true,
    "go.formatTool": "custom",
    "go.alternateTools": {
        "customFormatter": "xgoimports"
    },
    "go.formatFlags": [
        "-local=\"github.com/yourusername/yourproject\"",
        "-w",
        "-format-only"
    ]
}

Sorry, but it seems to be no way to set xgoimports as a default formatter in GoLand IDE.

Current limitations

xgoimports is unable to properly format imports if there are any comments in the import block.

These import clauses will be left as-is:

// This "import" clause won't be reformatted by xgoimports,
// however, the original behaviour of goimports is preserved.
import (
    "fmt"

    _ "github.com/myorg/myproject/subpkg2" // Has to be imported for side effects.

    "github.com/rs/zerolog/log"
    "go.uber.org/atomic"

    "github.com/myorg/myproject/subpkg1"
)

Installation

We provide pre-built binaries for the most common platforms, so you don’t need to build it from sources. There are several ways to install xgoimports:

Install via Homebrew (macOS)

You can install xgoimports via Homebrew on macOS. This is the recommended way to install it.

brew tap kapitanov/apps
brew install kapitanov/apps/xgoimports

Install from Linix packages

We provide pre-built packages for the most common Linux distributions. You can install xgoimports using the package manager of your distribution.

export VERSION="0.1.0" # replace with the actual version you want to install
export ARCH="amd64"    # replace with the actual architecture (amd64, arm64, etc.)
wget "https://github.com/kapitanov/xgoimports/releases/download/v${VERSION}/xgoimports_v${VERSION}_linux_${ARCH}.deb" \
    -O "xgoimports_v${VERSION}_linux_${ARCH}.deb"
sudo dpkg -i "xgoimports_v${VERSION}_linux_${ARCH}.deb"

export VERSION="0.1.0" # replace with the actual version you want to install
export ARCH="amd64"    # replace with the actual architecture (amd64, arm64, etc.)
wget "https://github.com/kapitanov/xgoimports/releases/download/v${VERSION}/xgoimports_v${VERSION}_linux_${ARCH}.rpm" \
    -O "xgoimports_v${VERSION}_linux_${ARCH}.rpm"
sudo rpm -i "xgoimports_v${VERSION}_linux_${ARCH}.rpm"

export VERSION="0.1.0" # replace with the actual version you want to install
export ARCH="amd64"    # replace with the actual architecture (amd64, arm64, etc.)
wget "https://github.com/kapitanov/xgoimports/releases/download/v${VERSION}/xgoimports_v${VERSION}_linux_${ARCH}.apk" \
    -O "xgoimports_v${VERSION}_linux_${ARCH}.apk"
sudo apk add --allow-untrusted "xgoimports_v${VERSION}_linux_${ARCH}.apk"

From pre-built binaries (for all platforms)

You can download the latest release of xgoimports from the Releases page. Just pick the version you want and the appropriate binary for your operating system and architecture.

From sources (for all platforms)

You can install xgoimports via go get:

go install github.com/kapitanov/xgoimports@latest

Note that you need to have Go installed on your system to use this method - and you must have the $GOPATH/bin in your PATH. Since you most definitely are a Go developer - you are likely to have all these prerequisites already.

License

This project is licensed under the BSD-3-Clause License.