gopls (pronounced "Go please") is the official Go language server developed by the Go team. It provides IDE features to any LSP-compatible editor.
You should not need to interact with gopls directly--it will be automatically integrated into your editor. The specific features and settings vary slightly by editor, so we recommend that you proceed to the documentation for your editor below.
To get started with gopls, install an LSP plugin in your editor of choice.
If you use gopls with an editor that is not on this list, please send us a CL updating this documentation.
For the most part, you should not need to install or update gopls. Your editor should handle that step for you.
If you do want to get the latest stable version of gopls, run the following command:
go install golang.org/x/tools/gopls@latest
Learn more in the advanced installation instructions.
Learn more about gopls releases in the release policy.
gopls supports both Go module, multi-module and GOPATH modes. See the workspace documentation for information on supported workspace layouts.
You can configure gopls to change your editor experience or view additional debugging information. Configuration options will be made available by your editor, so see your editor's instructions for specific details. A full list of gopls settings can be found in the settings documentation.
gopls inherits your editor's environment, so be aware of any environment variables you configure. Some editors, such as VS Code, allow users to selectively override the values of some environment variables.
Gopls is maintained by engineers on the Go tools team, who actively monitor the Go and VS Code Go issue trackers.
gopls follows the Go Release Policy, meaning that it officially supports only the two most recent major Go releases. Until August 2024, the Go team will also maintain best-effort support for the last 4 major Go releases, as described in issue #39146.
Starting with the release of Go 1.23.0 and gopls@v0.17.0 in August 2024, the gopls build will depend on the latest version of Go. However, due to the forward compatibility support added to the go command in Go 1.21, as long as Go 1.21 or later are used to install gopls, the toolchain upgrade will be handled automatically, just like any other dependency. Gopls will continue to support integrating with the two most recent major Go releases of the go command, per the Go Release Policy. See issue #65917 for more details.
Maintaining support for legacy versions of Go caused significant friction for gopls maintainers and held back other improvements. If you are unable to install a supported version of Go on your system, you can still install an older version of gopls. The following table shows the final gopls version that supports a given Go version. Go releases more recent than those in the table can be used with any version of gopls.
| Go Version | Final gopls version with support (without warnings) |
|---|---|
| Go 1.12 | gopls@v0.7.5 |
| Go 1.15 | gopls@v0.9.5 |
| Go 1.17 | gopls@v0.11.0 |
| Go 1.18 | gopls@v0.14.2 |
| Go 1.20 | gopls@v0.15.3 |
gopls currently only supports the go command, so if you are using a different build system, gopls will not work well. Bazel is not officially supported, but may be made to work with an appropriately configured go/packages driver. See bazelbuild/rules_go#512 for more information. You can follow these instructions to configure your gopls to work with Bazel.
If you are having issues with gopls, please follow the steps described in the troubleshooting guide.