Project disorganization

Organizing a project in Go can be challenging. There is no enforced structure or schema which can lead to code bases that are difficult to navigate.

Mistake

Having no plan on how a project should be organized.

Fix

There a many solutions for how to layout a project that all depend on the use case.

Flat

For small projects it’s usually fine to just have a flat layout. There is no need to over-complicate things.

Go community standard layout

Any project that intends to grow to substantial sizes and be used by multiple engineers should adhere to the Go community standard layout.

• /cmd => Main source code. Example: /cmd/foo/main.go
• /internal => Private code that should not be exported
• /pkg => Public code to be exported
• /test => Additional external tests and data. Unit test should not be here
• /configs => Configuration files
• /docs => Design and user documents
• /examples => Example use cases for the application/API
• /api => API contract files (Protocol buffers, Swagger, …)
• /web => Web application files (static files, assets, …)
• /build => Packaging and continuous integration files
• /scripts => Scripts for analysis, installation, etc
• /vendor => Application dependencies

Package organization

Packages are best to be organized by sub-directory. Consider the net package:

net:
  http:
    client.go:
  smtp:
    auto.go:
  addrselect.go:

References

• 100 Go Mistakes