What is revive?

Revive is a linter for Go code. A linter is a tool that reads source code and flags potential problems: style violations, risky patterns, unused variables, and other issues that a compiler might not catch but that can cause bugs or make code harder to read. Revive is designed as a faster, more configurable alternative to golint, which was the standard Go linter before it was deprecated. The main practical differences from golint are speed and flexibility. When type checking is turned off in the configuration, revive runs more than six times faster than golint. Unlike golint, you can enable or disable individual rules through a configuration file written in TOML format. You can also suppress specific rules for individual files or line ranges using comment directives in the code, which golint only allowed for auto-generated files. Revive supports multiple output formats for its warnings, including plain text, a stylized color display, JSON, and formats compatible with tools like Checkstyle and GitHub's SARIF standard. It integrates with VS Code, GoLand, Vim, and GitHub Actions. It can also be used as part of golangci-lint, which is a popular tool that bundles many Go linters together. Developers can extend revive by writing custom rules in Go and loading them as a plugin. The README includes a walkthrough of how to write a rule and how to use revive as a library rather than a standalone command. Installation options include Homebrew on Mac, the standard Go install command, a prebuilt binary from the releases page, or a Docker image. Configuration is optional: with no config file, revive behaves identically to golint, so switching over requires no immediate changes. The full README is longer than what was shown.