No-Compromise Deterministic GoLang Import Management

A mother of all tools to enforce deterministic order of imports across your golang codebase.

✅ Easy to use, configure or extend
✅ Deterministically orders toughest comment-ridden imports
✅ Respects existing user groupings (pinned by comments)
✅ Handles comments of all varieties gracefully

This repo is the home for:

pkg/analyzer/autogroupimports and pkg/organizer/autogroup
- ready to use, deterministic, highly configurable, pluggable, import order organizer
- based on golang Analyzer framework
cmd/gofancyimports fix
- ready to use cli with full power of pkg/organizer/autogroup and same command line interface as goimports
gofancyimports
- the lower level library which allows manipulating import groups with ease for implementing your own group and comment aware import fixers

`gofancyimports` vs other tools

	`gofancyimports`	`goimports`	`gofumpt`	`gopls`	`gci`	`goimports-reviser`
deterministic order	✅	❌	❌	❌	✅	✅
graceful comment handling	✅	✅	✅	✅	❌	❌
graceful whitespace handling	✅	✅	✅	✅	~	~
respect user groupings	✅	✅	✅	✅	❌	❌
fully programmatic configuration	✅	❌	❌	❌	~	~
golang `analysis` integration	✅	❌	❌	❓	✅	✅
exports framework	✅	❌	❌	❌	❌	❌

Get the ready to use tool:

If all you need is an import sorting tool that will deterministically fix your import order to a consistent opinionated convention, grab a copy of the gofancyimports tool:

go install github.com/NonLogicalDev/gofancyimports/cmd/gofancyimports@latest

$ gofancyimports fix -h
Fixup single or multiple provided files

Usage:
  gofancyimports fix [flags]

Flags:
  -d, --diff                print diff
      --group-effect        group side effect imports
      --group-nodot         group no dot imports
  -h, --help                help for fix
  -l, --local stringArray   group local imports (comma separated prefixes)
  -w, --write               write the file back?

Examples

gofancyimports fix

Before After

import (
	"github.com/sanity-io/litter"
	"flag"
)

import (
	_ "net/http/pprof"
	"os"
	"strconv"
	"gen/mocks/github.com/go-redis/redis"
	"github.com/go-redis/redis"
	"strings"
	"github.com/NonLogicalDev/gofancyimports"
)

import (
	"flag"
	_ "net/http/pprof"
	"os"
	"strconv"
	"strings"

	"gen/mocks/github.com/go-redis/redis"
	"github.com/NonLogicalDev/gofancyimports"
	"github.com/go-redis/redis"
	"github.com/sanity-io/litter"
)

gofancyimports fix --group-nodot

Before After

import (
	"github.com/sanity-io/litter"
	"flag"
)

import (
	_ "net/http/pprof"
	"os"
	"strconv"
	"gen/mocks/github.com/go-redis/redis"
	"github.com/go-redis/redis"
	"strings"
	"github.com/NonLogicalDev/gofancyimports"
)

import (
	"flag"
	_ "net/http/pprof"
	"os"
	"strconv"
	"strings"

	"gen/mocks/github.com/go-redis/redis"

	"github.com/go-redis/redis"
	"github.com/sanity-io/litter"
	"github.com/NonLogicalDev/gofancyimports"
)

gofancyimports fix --group-no-dot --group-effect --local=github.com/NonLogicalDev

Before After

import (
	"github.com/sanity-io/litter"
	"flag"
)

import (
	_ "net/http/pprof"
	"os"
	"strconv"
	"gen/mocks/github.com/go-redis/redis"
	"github.com/go-redis/redis"
	"strings"
	"github.com/NonLogicalDev/gofancyimports"
)

import (
	"flag"
	"os"
	"strconv"
	"strings"

	"gen/mocks/github.com/go-redis/redis"

	"github.com/go-redis/redis"
	"github.com/sanity-io/litter"

	"github.com/NonLogicalDev/gofancyimports"

	_ "net/http/pprof"
)

🎓 Extending or implementing your own import fixer

Background:

There are plenty of tools for formatting GoLang. Most of them do a fairly good job at tidying up imports. However they tend to not give a lot of power for deterministically setting the order, or suffer from issues around dealing with comments.

The world of Go Imports formatting divides into three common approaches:

Trust the programmer's groupings, and don't muck around with them, only sort within groups:
- go imports
Don't trust the programmer's grouping and impose a set of opinionated restrictive rules on how imports should be grouped.
- go fumpt / gopls
Give a little bit of control via CLI parameters but not export the framework to build custom formatter.
- gci / goimports-reviser

If your organization or project happens to use a convention that does not fit within the group 2, and you wish to modify an existing tool like fumpt, it ends up being rather difficult endeavor as these tools have not been designed with simple extensiblity in mind. This project stems from a wish to make programmaticaly defining rules for organizing imports simple and composable.

Lucky for us Go is blessed with a very well documented parser and AST implementation, however one of its biggest shortcomings is dealing with comments, and whitespace, especially around imports, because beyond the bare basics it ALL all about managing comments and whitespace. With advent of tools like go analysis which are very flexible about inspecting and modifying code, a compatible tool for programmatically working with imports groupings is sorely needed to provide a simple way of implementing an organization wide import style to avoid editor configurations fighting each other.

Solution `gofancyimports`

A tool that exposes import groups as a concept to the rule writer, and allow them to reorder, merge and split them deterministically, taking care of everything else.

The biggest selling point of this library is that you don't have to become an AST expert to write an import transform using this library, everything is handled sensibly and automatically, you just provide a function that takes existing import groupings (nicely abstracted) and transform it into a list of groupings you desire. All comments will be hoisted and adjusted for you.

This framework takes away the difficulty from dealing with floating comments, and whitespace between import spec groupings, by exposing import declarations and groupings as simple structs that you can freely modify. All of the complexity of rebuilding the imports AST to your spec represented by those structs is taken care of.

This framework can understand import clauses like this (See Fig 1). For example: all comments in the below figure are structurally parsed and when transformed are properly positioned, no matter how you reorder the import groups, all complexity of recomputing AST offsets is completely abstracted away.

Fig 1

package example

// [Import Decl Leading Comment: leading comment (not included as it is located prior to import group block)]

import "singleImport" // [Import Spec Comment: singleImport]

// [Import Decl Detached Comment: hoisted to Import Decl that follows]

// [Import Decl Doc Comment: for entire import block]
/*
	Multiline comments are understood and handled properly (import level).
*/
import (
	"pkg1" // [Import Spec Comment: pkg1]
	"pkg2"

	// [Import Decl Detached comment 1: unattached to Import Specs, but exposed in enclosing Import Decl]

	// [Import Spec Group Doc Comment: (pkg3, pkg4)]
	/*
		Multiline comments are understood and handled properly (spec level).
	*/
	"pkg3"
	"pkg4"

	// [Import Decl Detached comment 2: unattached to Import Specs, but exposed in enclosing Import Decl]
)

// [Import Decl Trailing comment: comment following the import specs]

Fig 1.1

gofancyimports debug output showing parsed import section

[
  {
    "CommentDoc": null,
    "CommentLeading": null,
    "CommentDetached": null,
    "Groups": [
      {
        "CommentDoc": null,
        "Specs": [
          [
            "\"singleImport\"// [Import Spec Comment: singleImport]",
            ""
          ]
        ]
      }
    ]
  },
  {
    "CommentDoc": {
      "CommentGroup": [
        {
          "Lines": [
            "// [Import Decl Doc Comment: for entire import block]"
          ]
        },
        {
          "Lines": [
            "/*",
            "\tMultiline comments are understood and handled properly (import level).",
            "*/"
          ]
        }
      ]
    },
    "CommentLeading": [
      {
        "CommentGroup": [
          {
            "Lines": [
              "// [Import Decl Detached Comment: hoisted to Import Decl that follows]"
            ]
          }
        ]
      }
    ],
    "CommentDetached": [
      {
        "CommentGroup": [
          {
            "Lines": [
              "// [Import Decl Detached comment 1: unattached to Import Specs, but exposed in enclosing Import Decl]"
            ]
          }
        ]
      },
      {
        "CommentGroup": [
          {
            "Lines": [
              "// [Import Decl Detached comment 2: unattached to Import Specs, but exposed in enclosing Import Decl]"
            ]
          }
        ]
      }
    ],
    "Groups": [
      {
        "CommentDoc": null,
        "Specs": [
          [
            "\"pkg1\"// [Import Spec Comment: pkg1]",
            ""
          ],
          [
            "\"pkg2\""
          ]
        ]
      },
      {
        "CommentDoc": {
          "CommentGroup": [
            {
              "Lines": [
                "// [Import Spec Group Doc Comment: (pkg3, pkg4)]"
              ]
            },
            {
              "Lines": [
                "/*",
                "\t\tMultiline comments are understood and handled properly (spec level).",
                "\t*/"
              ]
            }
          ]
        },
        "Specs": [
          [
            "\"pkg3\""
          ],
          [
            "\"pkg4\""
          ]
        ]
      }
    ]
  }
]

This package mainly exposes the following high level interface (See Fig 2). The implementation of a custom import fixer boils down to implementation of a simple function that transforms one list of []ImportDelaration that was parsed from file to another list of []ImportDelaration.

You can reorder add or remove entries from those ImportDeclarations. No comments will be lost and all new and existing comments will be magically and appropriately placed.

Fig 2

// imports.go
// ----------------------------------------------------------------------

// WithTransform allows overriding a custom import group transform.
// This is the main extension point for this library. By setting a custom
// function as the transform it is very simple to take complete control over the
// import ordering.
func WithTransform(transform types.ImportTransform) Option // ...

// RewriteImportsSource takes a filename and source and rewrite options and applies import transforms to the file.
//
// Consult the [WithTransform] function for a complete usage example.
func RewriteImportsSource(filename string, src []byte, opts ...Option) ([]byte, error) // ...

// RewriteImportsAST is a lower level function that takes a filename and source and returns
// an analysis.TextEdit snippet containing proposed fixes for out of the box integration
// with analysis libraries.
//
// In most cases [RewriteImportsSource] is a much more ergonomic batteries-included alternative.
//
// Contract: This functions will only ever return a single text edit.
//
// Consult the [WithTransform] function for a complete usage example.
func RewriteImportsAST(fset *token.FileSet, node *ast.File, src []byte, opts ...Option) ([]*analysis.TextEdit, error)

// pkg/types/types.go
// ----------------------------------------------------------------------

// ImportTransform is a function that allows reordering merging and splitting
// existing ImportDeclaration-s obtained from source.
type ImportTransform func(decls []ImportDeclaration) []ImportDeclaration

// ImportDeclaration represents a single import block. (i.e. the contents of the `import` statement)
type ImportDeclaration struct {
	// LeadingComments comments that are floating above this declaration,
	// in the middle of import blocks.
	LeadingComments []*ast.CommentGroup

	// DetachedComments are comments that are floating inside this declaration
	// unattached to specs (typically after the last import spec in a group).
	DetachedComments []*ast.CommentGroup

	// Doc is the doc comment for this import declaration.
	Doc *ast.CommentGroup

	// ImportGroups contains the list of underlying ast.ImportSpec-s.
	ImportGroups []ImportGroup
}

// ImportGroup maps to set of consecutive import specs delimited by
// whitespace and potentially having a doc comment.
//
// This type is the powerhouse of this package, allowing easy operation
// on sets of imports, delimited by whitespace.
//
// Contained within an ImportDeclaration.
type ImportGroup struct {
	Doc   *ast.CommentGroup
	Specs []*ast.ImportSpec
}

You can see the ease of use of this by having a look at:

gofancyimports/main.go
- Implementation of CLI that is using configurable autogroup transform
pkg/organizer/autogroup
- Implementation of Autogroup transform that is implemented using gofancyimports framework

Appendix

Appendix (Go Analysis Integration):

Good example of how easy using go analysis is:

https://arslan.io/2020/07/07/using-go-analysis-to-fix-your-source-code/

Appendix (AST Comments)

The difficulty of working with comments in Go AST mainly stems from the fact that Comments are do not quite behave like other AST nodes.

Firstly they are not part of the tree unless they are referenced by another AST node as either Doc or Line End comment.

And secondly they are very rigidly tied to the Byte offsets of corresponding files, meaning making changes to them or AST nodes to which they are attached requires recalculating their offset positions manually.

Appendix (Misc)

https://github.com/golang/tools/blob/6e9046bfcd34178dc116189817430a2ad1ee7b43/internal/imports/sortimports.go#L63

Name		Name	Last commit message	Last commit date
Latest commit History 39 Commits
assets		assets
cmd		cmd
internal		internal
pkg		pkg
scripts		scripts
testdata		testdata
.envrc		.envrc
.gitignore		.gitignore
.goreleaser.yaml		.goreleaser.yaml
LICENSE		LICENSE
Makefile		Makefile
README.md		README.md
go.mod		go.mod
go.sum		go.sum
imports.go		imports.go
imports_builder.go		imports_builder.go
imports_parser.go		imports_parser.go
imports_test.go		imports_test.go

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No-Compromise Deterministic GoLang Import Management

`gofancyimports` vs other tools

Get the ready to use tool:

Examples

🎓 Extending or implementing your own import fixer

Background:

Solution `gofancyimports`

Appendix

Appendix (Go Analysis Integration):

Appendix (AST Comments)

Appendix (Misc)

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No-Compromise Deterministic GoLang Import Management

gofancyimports vs other tools

Get the ready to use tool:

Examples

🎓 Extending or implementing your own import fixer

Background:

Solution gofancyimports

Appendix

Appendix (Go Analysis Integration):

Appendix (AST Comments)

Appendix (Misc)

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