go-ci

Go CI

A Go pipeline has exactly four gates: build, vet/lint, test with race detector, vulnerability scan. Everything else is optimization.

1. Baseline GitHub Actions Workflow

name: ci
on:
  push:
    branches: [main]
  pull_request:

permissions:
  contents: read

jobs:
  test:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
      - uses: actions/checkout@v4
      - uses: actions/setup-go@v5
        with:
          go-version-file: go.mod   # single source of truth
          cache: true               # caches module + build cache
      - run: go build ./...
      - run: go vet ./...
      - run: go test -race -shuffle=on -coverprofile=coverage.out ./...

  lint:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
      - uses: actions/checkout@v4
      - uses: actions/setup-go@v5
        with:
          go-version-file: go.mod
      - uses: golangci/golangci-lint-action@v6
        with:
          version: latest

  vuln:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
      - uses: actions/checkout@v4
      - uses: actions/setup-go@v5
        with:
          go-version-file: go.mod
      - run: go run golang.org/x/vuln/cmd/govulncheck@latest ./...

Key decisions baked in:

• go-version-file: go.mod — never hardcode the Go version in two places.
• cache: true on setup-go handles module and build caches; do not add manual actions/cache steps for Go on top of it.
• -race -shuffle=on — races and order-dependent tests fail in CI, not production.
• permissions: contents: read — least privilege by default.
• Lint in a separate job — it fails fast and parallelizes with tests.

2. golangci-lint Configuration

Commit a .golangci.yml; an unconfigured linter is noise:

linters:
  enable:
    - errcheck      # unchecked errors
    - govet
    - staticcheck
    - errorlint     # %w misuse, == on errors
    - gosec         # security patterns
    - revive        # style, replaces golint
    - misspell
issues:
  exclude-rules:
    - path: _test\.go
      linters: [gosec]  # test code may use weak randomness etc.