gothx.vim

A go plugin for vim/nvim, which only tries to do things that gopls doesn't do. thx.

The idea of this Experimental plugin is twofold:

1. To provide features which are not currently supported by gopls.

• You'll need to install a separate LSP client. See below
• As gopls grows and matures, any overlapping features will be deprecated/removed from gothx.vim (deprecated and replaced with messages 'use your LSC for this').

2. To focus on modules-aware tooling only.

• Avoid tools which are not actively embracing modules support (such as guru, which is being abandoned).

Note that this plugin doesn't hope to cover the same featureset as vim-go, (nor govim, probably). In fact, a third aim is to have a 'lighter' feature-set. gothx.vim will hopefully remain kinda small and nimble, and :ThxUpdateBinaries will hope to stay reasonably fast. I prefer using the same LSP client across different languages, so I'd sooner only use plugins which expressly avoid LSP-supplied features. vim-go's large feature-set overlaps with [recent] LSPs. You can configure vim-go to disable those overlapping features - I have documented those vim-go configuration options below, just in case that's what you're really looking for.

Install in the usual way

Pre-requisites: Use vim8 or neovim. Set up an LSP client (with gopls), for all the usual goodies like go-to-definition, get-referrers, format-on-save, etc.

Install the plugin [along with async.vim] in the usual way (depending on what plugin manager you use).

For example, using vim-plug:

Plug 'prabirshrestha/async.vim'
Plug 'laher/gothx.vim'

Installing/updating go-based tooling

Install (once only)

:ThxInstallBinaries

Upgrade (periodically)

:ThxUpdateBinaries

NOTE: if you have async.vim installed, gothx.vim will install your go things asynchronously … if not, it'll let you know it's blocking your UI thread.

Configuration

If you want :Thx… commands to resemble vim-go's :Go commands instead:

let g:gothx_command_prefix = 'Go' (default = Thx)

Features and Planned Features

You're free to map these commands to the vim-go names if you're not using vim-go - I just avoided it for compatibility reaons.

Feature	Done	vim-go feature	Related Tool	Notes
:ThxKeyify	[x]	:GoKeyify	keyify
:ThxAlt	[x]	:GoAlternate		This is just vim-script
:ThxTest	[x]	:GoTest		Basic version, no options
:ThxRun	[x]	:GoRun		Basic version, no options
:ThxImpl	[x]	:GoImpl	impl
gx on import	[x]	-		In vim, gx opens urls in a browser. Use it to opek gopkg.dev on import statements
:ThxPlay	[x]	:GoPlay		vim-go uses vim-script plus curl. I'm using a tool which doesn't support line selection (yet).
:ThxIfErr	[x]	:GoIfErr	iferr	Is this something gopls plans to cover?
:ThxFillStruct	[x]	:GoFillStruct

Planned	Started	vim-go feature	Related Tool	Notes
:ThxDoc	[ ]	:GoDoc	gogetdoc	See gx, above. Seems like a good start.
:ThxAddTags	[ ]	:GoAddTags	gomodifytags

LSP notes

The Vim ecosystem offers several LSP clients, including LanguageClient-neovim, vim-lsc, coc.nvim. Some plugins offer LSP features too, such as ALE and vim-go. In theory you can use any of these, although I haven't tried them all myself.

For the time being I recommend vim-lsp, because in combination with vim-lsp-settings and asymcomplete-lsp, it offers easy installation of Language Servers, and LSP-based completion support.

Recommended LSP Setup

To use vim-lsp using vim-plug, I recommend the following plugins:

Plug 'prabirshrestha/async.vim'
Plug 'prabirshrestha/asyncomplete.vim'
Plug 'prabirshrestha/asyncomplete-lsp.vim'
Plug 'prabirshrestha/vim-lsp'
Plug 'mattn/vim-lsp-settings'
Plug 'laher/gothx.vim'

note that this assumes vim-plug. Plugin managers tend to use a different function name for specifying plugins.

Out of scope

• GoReferrers, GoDef, GoInfo, GoFmt, GoRename, ...
• The following features as supported by gopls (March 2020):
  • check : show diagnostic results for the specified file
  • folding_ranges : display selected file's folding ranges
  • format : format the code according to the go standard
  • highlight : display selected identifier's highlights
  • implementation : display selected identifier's implementation
  • imports : updates import statements
  • links : list links in a file
  • prepare_rename : test validity of a rename operation at location
  • query : answer queries about go source code
  • references : display selected identifier's references
  • rename : rename selected identifier
  • signature : display selected identifier's signature
  • fix : apply suggested fixes
  • symbols : display selected file's symbols
• guru: various vim-go commands (e.g. :GoChannelPeers, GoCallees, GoPointsTo, …) use guru, which is not modules-aware.

NOTES

• Totally copied from vim-go and various mattn projects like gorename.
• This plugin can be used to replace parts of vim-go functionality, in the age of LSP.
• See also:
  • https://github.com/mattn/vim-goimports (covered by LSP)
  • https://github.com/mattn/vim-gorename (covered by LSP)
  • https://github.com/mattn/vim-gorun (similar feature included in gothx.vim)
  • https://github.com/laher/gokeyify.vim (similar feature included in gothx.vim)
  • https://github.com/mattn/vim-goimpl (similar features included in gothx.vim)
  • https://github.com/mattn/vim-goaddtags
  • https://github.com/mattn/vim-gosrc
  • https://github.com/mattn/go-errcheck-vim

Special love for vim-go

I LOVE the vim-go project. I fell in love with vim through that project, and between 2012-2020, it got me using vim or nvim as my main editor. vim-go was light-years ahead of other editors during the early days, and I think its 'lego blocks' architecture allowed for other plugin-writers to copy its features easily. Many thanks to the vim-go team, especially fatih and bc.

In the spirit of giving back, I'll make sure to offer PRs to vim-go for any features developed in gothx.vim . Please hold me to that.

Disabling LSP-supported features in vim-go

If you'd prefer to stick with vim-go but still avoid those feature-overlaps, the main thing you should do is to set g:go_pls_enabled=0. Note that there are a number of other LSP-supported features which vim-go solves in its own way. It seems like you can disable all of these using configuration settings. The following should get you most of the way there. Please let me know if you find others:

let g:go_gopls_enabled=0
let g:go_def_mapping_enabled=0
let g:go_doc_keywordprg_enabled=0
let g:go_fmt_autosave=0

I discussed with bc about automating these defaults based on a single item, or based on the presence of other LSPs. Given the variety of ways people are already using vim-go, bc understandably thought it would make the vim-go code and the user experience become more confusing, surprising, and harder to support. So, he updated the vim-go docs, and I've updated these docs, to clarify.

okthxvi!