Migrate tool dependencies to tools directive

[dnaeon]

Component(s)

No response

Describe the issue you're reporting

Currently the tools are using the pre-1.24 method for tracking tool dependencies.

Starting with Go 1.24 the recommended approach is to use the tools directive instead.

Migrating to the tools directive for tracking tool dependencies will simplify things a lot in the common Makefile by removing some dependencies, which can be tracked by the tools directive instead.

I can prepare a PR, if the maintainers are okay with such changes.

Let me know what do you think. Thanks!

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[mx-psi]

Migrating to the tools directive for tracking tool dependencies will simplify things a lot in the common Makefile by removing some dependencies, which can be tracked by the tools directive instead.

I don't understand this part. What would be simplified?

I can prepare a PR, if the maintainers are okay with such changes.

Will it continue working with renovate, our system for updating dependencies?

[dnaeon]

Hey @mx-psi ,

I don't understand this part. What would be simplified?

For one -- you don't have to maintain a placeholder tools.go just to keep track of tool dependencies. This file can be removed as a whole, since tools are now tracked using the tool directive.

Also, you don't really need to specify each tool in Makefile.Common, and when using them, you simply refer to the tool as in go tool <toolname>. The tools in the Makefile can be removed as well, so overall it becomes simpler.

This target here for example.

.PHONY: lint
lint: $(LINT)
	$(LINT) run

Becomes this:

.PHONY: lint
lint:
	go tool $(TOOLS_MOD_FILE) lint

Will it continue working with renovate, our system for updating dependencies?

According to these support should already be present for tool directive.

• Add support for Go's new `go tool` functionality renovatebot/renovate#33867
• feat(gomod): support tool directive renovatebot/renovate#35078

[mx-psi]

For one -- you don't have to maintain a placeholder tools.go just to keep track of tool dependencies. This file can be removed as a whole, since tools are now tracked using the tool directive.

I would rather not remove this file, since this will pollute our main go.mod file with unnecessary indirect dependencies. Can we start with keeping the internal/tools go module but switch to using go tool?

One thing I am worried about, given the helper text in go help tool, is that go tool only takes the current Go module into account and e.g. if you are in the exporter folder it will only look at exporter/go.mod and not at go.mod (or, in my suggested first step, internal/tools/go.mod)

[dnaeon]

I would rather not remove this file, since this will pollute our main go.mod file with unnecessary indirect dependencies. Can we start with keeping the internal/tools go module but switch to using go tool?

It will not pollute the main go.mod file, since the indirect dependencies will be kept within the internal/tools/go.mod file instead, just like they are as of today.

One thing I am worried about, given the helper text in go help tool, is that go tool only takes the current Go module into account and e.g. if you are in the exporter folder it will only look at exporter/go.mod and not at go.mod (or, in my suggested first step, internal/tools/go.mod)

This is configurable via the -modfile option, as shown in my previous comment.

[mx-psi]

Ah, okay! So feel free to open a PR, I am happy to review it :)

[dnaeon]

Hey @mx-psi , I've just submitted a PR about this one.

Please note that modernize has not been migrated to the new tool directive (details in the PR).

• feat: migrate to tools directive #13844