Go Tools as Deps

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2023-04-17

Scenario: I want to run golangci-lint occasionally or in CI to make sure I'm not doing bad things. BUT since it's not in my code I can't add it to the go.mod.
Solution!!!! Create a file called tools.go with the following content:

//go:build tools
// +build tools

package tools

import (
	_ "github.com/golangci/golangci-lint/cmd/golangci-lint"
)
            
        

Now we can run

go get github.com/golangci/golangci-lint/cmd/golangci-lint

and it'll stay in the mod file since it's in the code, but will never actually be built.
And now when we test it out:

go run github.com/golangci/golangci-lint/cmd/golangci-lint run --color always -v -c ./.golangci.yml
INFO [config_reader] Used config file .golangci.yml
INFO [lintersdb] Active 9 linters: [errcheck gofmt gosimple govet ineffassign nestif staticcheck typecheck unused]
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