IDE/Text Editor Recommendations for Go Development on Linux
IDE/Text Editor Recommendations for Go Development on Linux
Hello! My question is basically what the title says. I'm searching for an IDE/text editor for Go development and am wondering if anybody knows an alternative to these. Here is the list of software I tried:
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I've tried NeoVim but I really don't want to waste time doing text-based configuration and messing with extensions just to get some basic features working.
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I tried VSCodium but it doesn't exist in my system software repositories (I'm currently on Chimera Linux), and the flatpak version can't run any system commands.
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GoLand and Sublime Text are proprietary & paid.
It seems the market for IDEs is pretty small, so I wouldn't really be surprised if nothing existed that fit these criteria, but thanks for any answers in advance!
Edit: I've settled with Lite-XL which seems to be a great editor. Thanks for all of your great recommendations!
Zed now has Linux support.
And then helix editor works with Go LSP, this is my current daily driver. Even without plugins, helix works better and manageable than vim/emacs. Only thing that doesn’t work is debugger.
If you don't mind, can you share your helix config?
Sure. https://gist.github.com/linusr/18cd6f8b0b059073460f0f3c322b8939
Includes both config & languages config.
You could consider something like LazyVim installed on top of Nvim so you don't have to configure it from scratch.
+1, I would recommend neovim with lazyvim. The documentation is excellent, and it's very easy to set up.
Pulsar is a fork of Atom under active development. We don't publish a flatpak (yet) but there is a community maintained flatpak for it.
Otherwise if you want to look at something else I'd give Lite XL, Lapce or even Zed (it has now been open sourced and looks like it has a flatpak available) a look as interesting alternatives.
I found emacs to be perfectly fine. Didn't need an IDE. Go compiler then was astoundingly fast--instant builds, basically. I think newer Go compilers are slower but generate better code. It would be nice to have a compile time flag to turn the slow optimizations on and off, like C compilers have.
Didn't need an IDE.
That's actually considered an IDE.
And, these days, runs leaner than vi for single-file editing from a dead start. It's weird but it's true by like 1%.
I thought Emacs was an OS? 😏
Distrobox will resolve your issue with VSCode and then some. Run archlinux, debian or whatever you want inside a container. Install VSCode/VSCodium and any other apps that Chimera lacks and they'll run as if installed locally on your host PC. This keeps all of your development containerized and away from your host PC.
Why not just download a binary and/or make your own binary from the vscodium github page?
They've got a ton of statically linked ones to chose from that should be simple to just untar and run.
I would really prefer getting the text editor from flatpak or the system package manager for auto-updates, though I'm not sure if the binaries you mention also get auto-updates.
Codium auto updates itself, yes.
- Install nix.
- nix profile install nixpkgs#vscodium
- nix profile upgrade '.*'
Won't auto update but you could add the upgrade command to a login script or something.
Won't lie, nix has a high learning curve to get the most out of it, but installing a single app is pretty simple.
I enjoy VSCode mixed with some Sublime (employer-provided) and Vim in some tmux terminal windows, but I tend to be an oldschool developer who doesn't really ask for much beyond good syntax highlighting. YMMV.
I’ve tried NeoVim but I really don’t want to waste time doing text-based configuration and messing with extensions just to get some basic features working.
This is the reason I switched to helix. Comes out the box with what you would expect so you dont need 10s of plugins and 100s of lines of config to get a base line experience.
Yeah, but what happens when you're too used to using Emacs with evil mode, vi mode in the shell, and (neo)vim for a long time? And now you have to start using helix and its own bindings. If there was a helix with full vim bindings (and plugins, for custom themes) support, I'd probably be using it right now.
I did not find it very had to relearn the difference in bindings. Quite a lot are actually the same but one big difference is the selection before action rather than vims movement then action. Which IMO I find the helix way nicer after using it for a while. Never really lost the ability to use vim either and I can switch between them with relative ease. Though I do miss the helix way of working when I am forced to use vi input on things.
I think neovim with kickstart has out-of-the-box support for go, or if not, should be configurable with two added lines (add the treesitter parser and LSP). Unlike nvchad and lunarvim and stuff, this is not a "distribution" of neovim but a good starting point for a config that makes it easy to slowly learn how to add stuff and change stuff as you see fit.
At the beginning, you can add languages that you need support for pretty easily by adding to a list of LSPs and Treesitter parsers that should be installed; later on you can start adding and configuring plugins as you wish.
I'd say it sets you up about the same level as Helix or a little less than VSCode.
Try Kate
I like kate in general but I can't seem to get it to use semantic highlighting with gopls
I'm currently using Gnome and can't exactly change the QT theme in a supported way, so Kate is stuck in a light theme. Using Kvantum makes it look like a mix of light and dark theme in a really bad way.
The GTK alternative Geany also doesn't work well since it's also sadly stuck in a constant light theme.
I use Neovim, specifically LazyVim. It's super easy to get up and running with Go.
I really love how LazyVim have support for a lot of languages as Extras. Once I needed Go formatting so, installed Go extra, restarted NeoVim and all was ready, in less than a minute!
What do you want an IDE to do (that a straight-up text editor wouldn't?)
I just need something that supports gopls and some basic features such as syntax highlighting, reasonable indents, code-completion etc.
- I've tried NeoVim but I really don't want to waste time doing text-based configuration and messing with extensions just to get some basic features working.
Have you tried any of the premade Neovim configurations like Lunarvim or NvChad?
Apart from that maybe something can be done with vscodium in a distrobox container or something, I haven't looked much into that.
I used lunarvim until I was comfortable enough to use my own neovim setup, can confirm this it is generally a good way to go about doing vim setups.
You can use VS Code and Vim/Neovim for any language, as well as document writing and basic text editing. Just search for Go plugins
It shouldn't be hard to use either. If it is, you're doing something wrong probably
Helix or GNU Emacs, you can't go wrong
There's also LiteIDE
Just use vscode. It's basically the standard text editor for everything nowadays. Eventually you may want to start exploring vim/emacs but no reason to prioritise that now when all you need is something you can write code in that gives you squigglies when you do something wrong.
GVim is available pretty much everywhere? And it’s infinitely customizable.
It does have a learning curve, but then you get to use that knowledge for the rest of your life.
I'm going to have to take a look at that tomorrow since it has become pretty late here. Although thanks for the suggestion!
I’ve been using vim/GVim for over 30 years; with only minimal tweaks I’ve used it with maybe 15 different programming languages/compilers, a few of which needed custom configurations written to do anything useful.
While everyone else is struggling to get on with the IDE du jour, I just get stuff done without having to learn anything new other than a new syntax and library set.
Helix. It's modal like Vim but the defaults just work, and a quick "hx --health" will list every mode and what package you need to install for the language server.
I use lite-xl, it has been very good, but I'm not a Go developer though.
They also release an appimage and I just did a quick test on a alpine container and it works, so it should work on Chimera as well.
lite-xl seems very interesting, but sadly I wasn't able to launch it on Chimera Linux (I get the error
cannot execute command "./LiteXL-v2.1.5-x86_64.AppImage": No such file or directoryon any shell I try to launch it with). Is this a simple problem I can fix, or should I run it with Distrobox?That's interesting that it doesn't work, iirc the biggest difference of chimera is that it uses musl like alpine does.
Can you extract the appimage with
--appimage-extractflag and run the AppRun that's inside of it directly? Or that also fails?Isn't lite-xl in your distro repo?
I use VIM but I am not a Go developer
By chimera Linux, do you mean the gaming one or this one?
Just curious
Atom?
Pulsar is the current maintained fork of that project, we forked it before it got shut down and are actively developing it,
Is that still being recommended? Last I heard it was eol, no longer getting feature changes or improvements and was basically superceded by vscode.
Yes and no. The original project is dead but we forked it and continue to maintain and improve it as Pulsar
I'm out of the loop. Thanks for filling me in.
Try Lunarvim. It's NeoVim, but ships as a fully functional IDE with easy customization if needed. Honestly I basically just changed the theme, font, and added a preview scrollbar.
Blazingly fast, extremely functional, endless customization if desired.