What go formatter should we use?

[Luap99]

Currently our repos are using different formatters, some are set to only use gofmt (official go formatter) while others enforce formatting via gofumpt (https://github.com/mvdan/gofumpt)

Buildah, common and storage modules are set to use gofumpt enforced via the golangci-lint config
Podman, Skopeo and image are using the normal gofmt also enforced via golangci-lint config AFAIK

Both have upsides and downsides, gofmt is the official tool but less strict. This means if someone is using gofumpt locally they might end up reformatting large parts of unrelated code making reviews harder, compare #27270. Which in turn means reviewers likely ask you to revert such formatting changes which means work.

On the other hand gofumpt is less "common" and not all might be using it, then PRs are failing CI due some minor formatting complains. This then also poses extra work for the contributor to fix them.

So overall it comes down to what most people generally use, given our projects seems to be split and we maintainers didn't have any strong option in either directions we like to hear form more contributors on what they prefer.

[skyraider256526]

Could we add a pre-commit hook, to lint and format using golang-ci and if there are changes abort the commit and ask commiter to confirm and re-commit?

[Luap99]

The problem is that each platform has some different requirements.
On linux I just use make validate for example but I know others prefer make validatepr which runs in a container and thus works on macos. And on windows there is no make but rather a custom .\winmake script.

But AFAIK client hooks are not distributed by default anyway so it would still be up to contributor to enable them? I for one would not want to run them as part of pre commit because linting and other steps take quite some time and for many trivial commits I do that is just unnecessary slowdown.
But I guess if people like it would could provide example hook scripts as part of the repo.

[mtrmac]

I have very little opinion on what the formatter should be.

My somewhat strong opinion is that this is not worth spending much time over. That, sort of, means defaulting to whatever is the language’s default — go fmt that is.