Apply transformations to Go code with eg

Sat, Aug 27, 2016

If you are willing to make large scale refactoring in your Go programs, automating the refactoring tasks is more desirable than manual editing. eg is a program that allows you to perform transformations based on template Go files.

To install the tool, run the following:

$ go get golang.org/x/tools/cmd/eg

eg requires a template file to look for which transformation it should apply to your source code. What’s nice is that the template file is a Go file with little annotations.

Consider the following Go program:

$ cat $GOPATH/src/hello/hello.go
package hello

import "time"

// ExtendWith50000ns adds 50000ns to t.
func ExtendWith50000ns(t time.Time) time.Time {
	return t.Add(time.Duration(50000))
}

Assume you want to eliminate the unnecessary time.Duration casting at ExtendWith50000ns and as a good practice, you would also like to add a unit to the duration rather than just passing 50000.

eg requires a template file where you define before and afters that represents the transformation.

$ cat T.template
package template

import (
    "time"
)

func before(t time.Time, d time.Duration) time.Time {
    // if already time.Duration, do not cast.
    return t.Add(time.Duration(d))
}

func after(t time.Time, d time.Duration) time.Time  {
    return t.Add(d * time.Nanosecond)
}

And run the eg command on your hello package to apply it at every occurrence of this pattern.

$ eg -w -t T.template hello
=== /Users/jbd/src/hello/hello.go (1 matches)

Voila!

The file now contains a duration that is not casted unnecessarily and it has a unit.

$ cat $GOPATH/src/hello/hello.go
package hello

import "time"

// ExtendWith50000ns adds 50000ns to t.
func ExtendWith50000ns(t time.Time) time.Time {
	return t.Add(50000 * time.Nanosecond)
}

Note: There are many .template files underneath the package for testing purposes but they can also be used as a reference how to write other transformation templates.

rakyll.org

Apply transformations to Go code with eg