Go Development Patterns

When to Use

• Building Go services or CLI applications
• Implementing job scheduling or task orchestration
• Integrating with Docker API
• Building LDAP/Active Directory clients
• Designing resilient systems with retry logic
• Setting up comprehensive test suites

Core Principles

Type Safety is Non-Negotiable

• Avoid: interface{}, sync.Map, scattered type assertions, reflection
• Prefer: Generics [T any], concrete types, compile-time verification

Consistency is Critical

• One pattern per problem domain
• Match existing codebase patterns
• Refactor holistically or not at all

References

Reference	Purpose
references/architecture.md	Package structure, config management, middleware chains
references/resilience.md	Retry logic, graceful shutdown, context propagation
references/docker.md	Docker client patterns, buffer pooling
references/ldap.md	LDAP/Active Directory integration
references/testing.md	Test strategies, build tags, table-driven tests
references/linting.md	golangci-lint v2, staticcheck, code quality
references/api-design.md	Bitmask options, functional options, builders
references/fuzz-testing.md	Go fuzzing patterns, security seeds
references/mutation-testing.md	Gremlins configuration, test quality measurement
references/makefile.md	Standard Makefile interface for CI/CD

Package Structure

project/
├── cmd/       # Entry points (main packages)
├── core/      # Core business logic, domain types
├── cli/       # CLI commands, configuration
├── web/       # HTTP handlers, middleware
├── config/    # Configuration management
├── metrics/   # Observability (Prometheus, logging)
└── internal/  # Private packages

Testing Quick Reference

# Unit tests
go test ./...

# With integration tests
go test -tags=integration ./...

# With race detector
go test -race ./...

# With coverage
go test -coverprofile=coverage.out ./...

Build Tags

// Unit (default)
func TestValidation(t *testing.T) { ... }

//go:build integration
func TestDockerExec(t *testing.T) { ... }

//go:build e2e
func TestFullWorkflow(t *testing.T) { ... }

Quality Gates

.PHONY: dev-check
dev-check: fmt vet lint security test

lint:
	golangci-lint run --timeout 5m

security:
	gosec ./...
	gitleaks detect

Key Conventions

// Errors: lowercase, no punctuation
return errors.New("invalid input")

// Naming: ID, URL, HTTP (not Id, Url, Http)
var userID string

// Error wrapping
return fmt.Errorf("failed to process: %w", err)

See reference files for complete patterns and examples.

Related Skills

This skill is the primary entry point for Go development. For complete project setup, coordinate with:

Task	Skill
Repository setup, branch protection, auto-merge	github-project
OpenSSF Scorecard, SLSA provenance, signed releases	enterprise-readiness
Security audits (OWASP, CVE analysis)	security-audit

Workflow

go-development (this skill)
├── Code quality: linting, testing, fuzzing
├── Standard Makefile: test, build, lint, fuzz
└── Delegates to:
    ├── github-project → repo setup, CI workflows, branch protection
    └── enterprise-readiness → supply chain security, SLSA, signing

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Contributing: Improvements to this skill should be submitted to the source repository: https://github.com/netresearch/go-development-skill