Getting started

Quickly get started using Staticcheck

Installation

Beginning with Go 1.17, the simplest way of installing Staticcheck is by running go install honnef.co/go/tools/cmd/staticcheck@latest. This will install the latest version of Staticcheck to $GOPATH/bin. To find out where $GOPATH is, run go env GOPATH. Instead of @latest, you can also use a specific version, such as @2020.2.1.

If you’d like to be notified of new releases, you can use GitHub’s Releases only watches.

Binary releases

We publish binary releases for the most common operating systems and CPU architectures. These can be downloaded from GitHub.

Distribution packages

Many package managers include Staticcheck, allowing you to install it with your usual commands, such as apt install. Note, however, that you might not always get new releases in a timely manner.

What follows is a non-exhaustive list of the package names in various package repositories.

Arch Linux
staticcheck
Debian
go-staticcheck
Fedora
golang-honnef-tools
Homebrew
staticcheck
MacPorts
staticcheck
NixOS
go-tools
Scoop
staticcheck

Running Staticcheck

The staticcheck command works much like go build or go vet do. It supports all of the same package patterns. For example, staticcheck . will check the current package, and staticcheck ./... will check all packages. For more details on specifying packages to check, see go help packages.

Therefore, to start using Staticcheck, just run it on your code: staticcheck ./.... It will print any issues it finds, or nothing at all if your code is squeaky clean.

Read the Running Staticcheck articles to learn more about running Staticcheck.