2025-07-12 | Categories reviewdog  | Tags reviewdog 

In modern collaborative development, automated code review is a key factor in improving team efficiency. Ideally, we want a linter like golangci-lint to run automatically when a Pull Request is created and provide direct feedback in GitHub PR comments. This is exactly what reviewdog is made for.

This article explains how to combine golangci-lint with reviewdog using GitHub Actions.

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🧰 Tool Overview

• golangci-lint: An all-in-one linting tool for Go that supports many linters (like govet, errcheck, etc.).
• reviewdog: A tool that supports various linters and posts the results as comments in GitHub PRs.

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📦 Quick Start

1. Create .github/workflows/lint.yml

name: Lint with golangci-lint and reviewdog

on: [pull_request]

jobs:
  golangci-lint:
    name: 🧪 Lint Go Code
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest

    steps:
      - name: 📥 Checkout code
        uses: actions/checkout@v4

      - name: 🔧 Set up Go
        uses: actions/setup-go@v5
        with:
          go-version: '1.21'

      - name: 🧹 Run golangci-lint with reviewdog
        uses: reviewdog/action-golangci-lint@v2
        with:
          github_token: $
          golangci_lint_flags: '--timeout=3m'
          reporter: github-pr-review # Alternatives: github-pr-check / github-check
          level: warning

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🎯 Result Preview

In your PR, reviewdog will automatically annotate lint issues directly on the code lines, like this:

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🛠 Configuration Options

Parameter	Description
github_token	GitHub token, usually secrets.GITHUB_TOKEN.
reporter	Output type: github-pr-review (inline), github-pr-check, github-check
level	Severity level: info, warning, error
golangci_lint_flags	Flags passed to golangci-lint, such as config files or filtering rules.

---

📁 Project Structure Example

.
├── .github/
│   └── workflows/
│       └── lint.yml       # reviewdog integration
├── .golangci.yml          # golangci-lint config
├── main.go
└── go.mod

Sample .golangci.yml

run:
  timeout: 3m
linters:
  enable:
    - govet
    - errcheck
    - staticcheck
    - unused
issues:
  exclude-rules:
    - path: _test\.go
      linters:
        - errcheck

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✅ Tips

• reviewdog/action-golangci-lint automatically installs golangci-lint, no manual setup required.
• reporter: github-pr-review is ideal for inline annotations during code review.
• Works with private repos as long as secrets.GITHUB_TOKEN is configured.

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🧩 Further Reading

• reviewdog official documentation
• golangci-lint configuration reference
• GitHub Actions guide

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🧠 Conclusion

By integrating golangci-lint with reviewdog in your GitHub PR workflow, you can provide developers with immediate feedback on code style and potential bugs, ultimately improving code quality and team collaboration.

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