Goroutine Defer Guard

A static analysis tool that ensures all goroutines have proper panic recovery via a configurable panic handler (defaults to HandlePanic).

Example use case: ensure that every goroutine defers to your Sentry reporting wrapper, because Sentry needs panics recovered inside each goroutine.

What it does

The linter analyzes Go code to find goroutines and ensures that:

1. Anonymous goroutines have defer <target>() as their first statement
2. Function call goroutines call functions that have defer <target>() as their first statement
3. Method call goroutines call methods that have defer <target>() as their first statement

Installation

go install github.com/status-im/goroutine-defer-guard/cmd/goroutine-defer-guard@latest

Usage

# Run on current directory (defaults to target HandlePanic in the same package)
goroutine-defer-guard ./...

# Skip certain directories
goroutine-defer-guard -skip=./vendor ./...

# Specify a fully-qualified panic handler (import path + function)
goroutine-defer-guard -target=github.com/your/module/common.HandlePanic ./...

# Example: Sentry reporting handler
# Point the linter at your wrapper that reports panics to Sentry:
goroutine-defer-guard -target=github.com/yourorg/observability/panicutil.ReportToSentry ./...

Examples

✅ Good - Anonymous goroutine with defer

go func() {
    defer common.HandlePanic()
    // ... rest of function
}()

❌ Bad - Missing defer statement

go func() {
    // Missing defer common.HandlePanic()
    // ... rest of function
}()

✅ Good - Function call with proper defer

func worker() {
    defer common.HandlePanic()
    // ... rest of function
}

// Usage
go worker()

How it works

The linter uses:

1. AST analysis to find go statements (goroutines)
2. Go type information to resolve function/method definitions
3. Static analysis to verify the first statement is defer common.HandlePanic()

Configuration

• -target (default HandlePanic): fully-qualified panic handler in the form import/path.Func. If you omit the import path the linter accepts a function in the current package or a selector it can resolve to that name.

Requirements

• Go 1.21+

License

Mozilla Public License 2.0