Source File
doc.go
Belonging Package
golang.org/x/tools/go/packages
// Copyright 2018 The Go Authors. All rights reserved.// Use of this source code is governed by a BSD-style// license that can be found in the LICENSE file./*Package packages loads Go packages for inspection and analysis.The [Load] function takes as input a list of patterns and returns alist of [Package] values describing individual packages matched by thosepatterns.A [Config] specifies configuration options, the most important of which isthe [LoadMode], which controls the amount of detail in the loaded packages.Load passes most patterns directly to the underlying build tool.The default build tool is the go command.Its supported patterns are described athttps://pkg.go.dev/cmd/go#hdr-Package_lists_and_patterns.Other build systems may be supported by providing a "driver";see [The driver protocol].All patterns with the prefix "query=", where query is anon-empty string of letters from [a-z], are reserved and may beinterpreted as query operators.Two query operators are currently supported: "file" and "pattern".The query "file=path/to/file.go" matches the package or packages enclosingthe Go source file path/to/file.go. For example "file=~/go/src/fmt/print.go"might return the packages "fmt" and "fmt [fmt.test]".The query "pattern=string" causes "string" to be passed directly tothe underlying build tool. In most cases this is unnecessary,but an application can use Load("pattern=" + x) as an escaping mechanismto ensure that x is not interpreted as a query operator if it contains '='.All other query operators are reserved for future use and currentlycause Load to report an error.The Package struct provides basic information about the package, including- ID, a unique identifier for the package in the returned set;- GoFiles, the names of the package's Go source files;- Imports, a map from source import strings to the Packages they name;- Types, the type information for the package's exported symbols;- Syntax, the parsed syntax trees for the package's source code; and- TypesInfo, the result of a complete type-check of the package syntax trees.(See the documentation for type Package for the complete list of fieldsand more detailed descriptions.)For example,Load(nil, "bytes", "unicode...")returns four Package structs describing the standard library packagesbytes, unicode, unicode/utf16, and unicode/utf8. Note that one patterncan match multiple packages and that a package might be matched bymultiple patterns: in general it is not possible to determine whichpackages correspond to which patterns.Note that the list returned by Load contains only the packages matchedby the patterns. Their dependencies can be found by walking the importgraph using the Imports fields.The Load function can be configured by passing a pointer to a Config asthe first argument. A nil Config is equivalent to the zero Config, whichcauses Load to run in [LoadFiles] mode, collecting minimal information.See the documentation for type Config for details.As noted earlier, the Config.Mode controls the amount of detailreported about the loaded packages. See the documentation for type LoadModefor details.Most tools should pass their command-line arguments (after any flags)uninterpreted to Load, so that it can interpret themaccording to the conventions of the underlying build system.See the Example function for typical usage.See also [golang.org/x/tools/go/packages/internal/linecount]for an example application.# The driver protocolLoad may be used to load Go packages even in Go projects that usealternative build systems, by installing an appropriate "driver"program for the build system and specifying its location in theGOPACKAGESDRIVER environment variable.For example,https://github.com/bazelbuild/rules_go/wiki/Editor-and-tool-integrationexplains how to use the driver for Bazel.The driver program is responsible for interpreting patterns in itspreferred notation and reporting information about the packages thatthose patterns identify. Drivers must also support the special "file="and "pattern=" patterns described above.The patterns are provided as positional command-line arguments. AJSON-encoded [DriverRequest] message providing additional informationis written to the driver's standard input. The driver must write aJSON-encoded [DriverResponse] message to its standard output. (Thismessage differs from the JSON schema produced by 'go list'.)The value of the PWD environment variable seen by the driver processis the preferred name of its working directory. (The working directorymay have other aliases due to symbolic links; see the comment on theDir field of [exec.Cmd] for related information.)When the driver process emits in its response the name of a filethat is a descendant of this directory, it must use an absolute paththat has the value of PWD as a prefix, to ensure that the returnedfilenames satisfy the original query.*/package packages // import "golang.org/x/tools/go/packages"/*Motivation and design considerationsThe new package's design solves problems addressed by two existingpackages: go/build, which locates and describes packages, andgolang.org/x/tools/go/loader, which loads, parses and type-checks them.The go/build.Package structure encodes too much of the 'go build' wayof organizing projects, leaving us in need of a data type that describes apackage of Go source code independent of the underlying build system.We wanted something that works equally well with go build and vgo, andalso other build systems such as Bazel and Blaze, making it possible toconstruct analysis tools that work in all these environments.Tools such as errcheck and staticcheck were essentially unavailable tothe Go community at Google, and some of Google's internal tools for Goare unavailable externally.This new package provides a uniform way to obtain package metadata byquerying each of these build systems, optionally supporting theirpreferred command-line notations for packages, so that tools integrateneatly with users' build environments. The Metadata query functionexecutes an external query tool appropriate to the current workspace.Loading packages always returns the complete import graph "all the way down",even if all you want is information about a single package, because the querymechanisms of all the build systems we currently support ({go,vgo} list, andblaze/bazel aspect-based query) cannot provide detailed informationabout one package without visiting all its dependencies too, so there isno additional asymptotic cost to providing transitive information.(This property might not be true of a hypothetical 5th build system.)In calls to TypeCheck, all initial packages, and any package thattransitively depends on one of them, must be loaded from source.Consider A->B->C->D->E: if A,C are initial, A,B,C must be loaded fromsource; D may be loaded from export data, and E may not be loaded at all(though it's possible that D's export data mentions it, so atypes.Package may be created for it and exposed.)The old loader had a feature to suppress type-checking of functionbodies on a per-package basis, primarily intended to reduce the work ofobtaining type information for imported packages. Now that imports aresatisfied by export data, the optimization no longer seems necessary.Despite some early attempts, the old loader did not exploit export data,instead always using the equivalent of WholeProgram mode. This was dueto the complexity of mixing source and export data packages (nowresolved by the upward traversal mentioned above), and because export datafiles were nearly always missing or stale. Now that 'go build' supportscaching, all the underlying build systems can guarantee to produceexport data in a reasonable (amortized) time.Test "main" packages synthesized by the build system are now reported asfirst-class packages, avoiding the need for clients (such as go/ssa) toreinvent this generation logic.One way in which go/packages is simpler than the old loader is in itstreatment of in-package tests. In-package tests are packages thatconsist of all the files of the library under test, plus the test files.The old loader constructed in-package tests by a two-phase process ofmutation called "augmentation": first it would construct and type checkall the ordinary library packages and type-check the packages thatdepend on them; then it would add more (test) files to the package andtype-check again. This two-phase approach had four major problems:1) in processing the tests, the loader modified the library package,leaving no way for a client application to see both the testpackage and the library package; one would mutate into the other.2) because test files can declare additional methods on types defined inthe library portion of the package, the dispatch of method calls inthe library portion was affected by the presence of the test files.This should have been a clue that the packages were logicallydifferent.3) this model of "augmentation" assumed at most one in-package testper library package, which is true of projects using 'go build',but not other build systems.4) because of the two-phase nature of test processing, all packages thatimport the library package had to be processed before augmentation,forcing a "one-shot" API and preventing the client from calling Loadin several times in sequence as is now possible in WholeProgram mode.(TypeCheck mode has a similar one-shot restriction for a different reason.)Early drafts of this package supported "multi-shot" operation.Although it allowed clients to make a sequence of calls (or concurrentcalls) to Load, building up the graph of Packages incrementally,it was of marginal value: it complicated the API(since it allowed some options to vary across calls but not others),it complicated the implementation,it cannot be made to work in Types mode, as explained above,and it was less efficient than making one combined call (when this is possible).Among the clients we have inspected, none made multiple calls to loadbut could not be easily and satisfactorily modified to make only a single call.However, applications changes may be required.For example, the ssadump command loads the user-specified packagesand in addition the runtime package. It is tempting to simply append"runtime" to the user-provided list, but that does not work if the userspecified an ad-hoc package such as [a.go b.go].Instead, ssadump no longer requests the runtime package,but seeks it among the dependencies of the user-specified packages,and emits an error if it is not found.Questions & Tasks- Add GOARCH/GOOS?They are not portable concepts, but could be made portable.Our goal has been to allow users to express themselves using the conventionsof the underlying build system: if the build system honors GOARCHduring a build and during a metadata query, then so shouldapplications built atop that query mechanism.Conversely, if the target architecture of the build is determined bycommand-line flags, the application can pass the relevantflags through to the build system using a command such as:myapp -query_flag="--cpu=amd64" -query_flag="--os=darwin"However, this approach is low-level, unwieldy, and non-portable.GOOS and GOARCH seem important enough to warrant a dedicated option.- How should we handle partial failures such as a mixture of good andmalformed patterns, existing and non-existent packages, successful andfailed builds, import failures, import cycles, and so on, in a call toLoad?- Support bazel, blaze, and go1.10 list, not just go1.11 list.- Handle (and test) various partial success cases, e.g.a mixture of good packages and:invalid patternsnonexistent packagesempty packagespackages with malformed package or import declarationsunreadable filesimport cyclesother parse errorstype errorsMake sure we record errors at the correct place in the graph.- Missing packages among initial arguments are not reported.Return bogus packages for them, like golist does.- "undeclared name" errors (for example) are reported out of source fileorder. I suspect this is due to the breadth-first resolution now usedby go/types. Is that a bug? Discuss with gri.*/
The pages are generated with Golds v0.7.6. (GOOS=linux GOARCH=amd64)