go-coding-style.md

Go coding style guide

An overview of coding idioms and practiced style in stackrox/stackrox.

Whenever you encounter during code review (either as a reviewer or as a PR author) something that you feel is non-obvious or not common sense and does not fall into what can be considered common Go style, please add it to this guide. Thanks!

On consistency

There are often many ways to express the same thing (and not all of them are correct). Consistency in code serves two main purposes:

• Avoiding errors of ignorance.
• Minimizing reader's surprise and hence facilitate reviews and maintenance.

When you deviate from a common pattern, consider leaving a comment explaining why you do so. Prefer local consistency over global if you have to choose.

On readability

One of the things that significantly impairs code readability is the amount of non-local reasoning required to understand the contract and assumptions. Strive to design your types and interfaces so that they can only be used in the expected, correct way.

// Bad: do all `cache` users, current and future know how to use it correctly?  
var (
	cache = NewCache()
)
...
func (w *widget) Update(x X) error {
	w.mutex.Lock()
	defer w.mutex.Unlock()

	if cache.Contains(x) {
		...	
	}
	...
}

// Better: `cache` users likely understand that manipulations require
// synchronization might miss future changes to this contract. 
var (
	cache = NewCache()
	mutex sync.RWMutex
)
...
func (w *widget) Update(x X) error {
	mutex.Lock()
	defer mutex.Unlock()

	if cache.Contains(x) {
		...	
	}
	...
}

// Good: `cache` is only used by `widget` methods likely living in the same file.
type widget struct {
	cache Cache
	mutex sync.RWMutex
}
...
func (w *widget) Update(x X) error {
	w.mutex.Lock()
	defer w.mutex.Unlock()

	if w.cache.Contains(x) {
		...	
	}
	...
}

// Good: code clearly relies on the fact that `cache` synchronizes inside.
type widget struct {
	cache sync.Cache // can be used concurrently 
}
...
func (w *widget) Update(x X) error {
	if w.cache.Contains(x) {
		...	
	}
	...
}

Capture in comments assumptions and decisions that are not obvious from the code, for example:

var (
	authorizer = perrpc.FromMap(map[authz.Authorizer][]string{
		// When this endpoint was public, Sensor relied on it to check Central's
		// availability. While Sensor might not do so today, we need to ensure
		// backward compatibility with older Sensors.
		or.SensorOr(user.Authenticated()): {
			"/v1.MetadataService/GetMetadata",
		},
	})
)

Guidelines

• A Close() on a file etc. should only be deferred and wrapped in utils.IgnoreError if you exclusively read. If you write to a file, you must check for a nil error upon close, otherwise you cannot be certain that all data has been persisted.
• Use the fact that certain operations return zero values by default to write conditions in a more goal-oriented way. E.g., prefer if x := m[k]; x != nil { foo(*x) } over if x, ok := m[k]; ok { foo(*x) }. The former makes it apparent that the *x cannot panic while the latter only after checking that m indeed can never contain nil values.

Declarations

• Prefer var x T instead of x := T{} or x := 0/false/… for initializing zero-valued local variables.
• Avoid var ( … ) blocks within function scopes, only use them at the global scope.
• Declarations at the global scope should follow this order: const block, var block, everything else. If you define struct types and methods of this type in the same file, the order should be: type declaration, new/constructor function, methods. Do not interleave methods of different types.
• Right next to a struct definition, if applicable, declare which interfaces the struct implements: var _ Interface = (*structImplementingInterface)(nil).
• If you are registering packages via _ then extract this line into its own import block and preface it with a comment explaining what this import does.
• Scope variables as low as possible.
• Only use if + assignment with :=.

Functions

• Every function that can potentially block should receive a ctx context.Context as the first parameter.
• An exported function should only ever return exported types (even though Go permits otherwise).
• Always pass around proto objects as pointers when traversing function boundaries. If you need to make a copy, use obj.CloneVT().
• When using slice tricks like filtering in a function, pass the slice as a pointer to explicitly call out that the underlying data may be modified in that function.
• Avoid naked returns

// Bad: naked return requires to look on the func declaration to know what is
// being returned.
func split(sum int) (x, y int) {
	x = sum * 4 / 9
	y = sum - x
	return
}

// Good: it is known what is being returned by looking only at the return
// statement.
func split(sum int) (x, y int) {
	x = sum * 4 / 9
	y = sum - x
	return x, y
}

Types and collections

• Use .GetField() instead of .Field on protobuf objects
• Do not embed public types that are part of an object’s internal state into structs, exported or non-exported. I.e., do mutex sync.Mutex instead of sync.Mutex at the struct level. obj.Lock() suggests that Lock would be part of the public interface, which it should not be.
• When using append, preallocate whenever possible.
• When setting elements in a slice, instantiate like s := make([]string, 0, capacity) and use append because this greatly decreases potential index out of bounds errors.

Concurrency

• If you're new to Go, consider watching Malte's talk "Concurrency in Go (Part 1)": slides, recording.
• Always use defer mutex.Unlock() instead of explicitly calling Unlock(). If you need to unlock before the function returns, use concurrency.WithLock() or concurrency.WithRLock().
• When you add the go keyword to a function call, check the function's concurrent correctness.

Error handling

• Use errors.Wrap[f]() from github.com/pkg/errors to add a message when forwarding the error.
• Use RoxError.CausedBy[f]() from pkg/errox to add context to an existing message.
• Prefer RoxError.New[f]() from pkg/errox over errors.Errorf() from github.com/pkg/errors and errors.New() from the builtin errors package to assign the error one of the standard classes.
• If you must define designated error conditions, do this in the package as global variables.
• When calling a function that returns an error, always check for err != nil before doing anything else with the results.
• When panic’ing, always use error objects as the argument.
• When doing a type conversion, use the form with two values on the left side of the assignment operator, even if you don’t use the value, e.g., x, _ := val.(T). The single-valued form may panic. If you know that the type conversion will always succeed, add a comment explaining why.

Comments and text

• Use TODO(ROX-XYZ) for tracking what should be done in a follow-up.
• Aim for 120 columns max line length; consider 80 columns for comments and text blobs for readability.