ERRO [linters_context] typechecking error: ambiguous import: found package helloworld in multiple modules

[aphsa]

I wrote a hello world program. But golangci-lint is not happy with it.

$ cat go.mod
module helloworld

go 1.20

$ cat main.go
package main

import "fmt"

func main() {
        fmt.Println("hello world")
}

$ go run main.go
hello world

$ golangci-lint run
ERRO [linters_context] typechecking error: ambiguous import: found package helloworld in multiple modules:
        helloworld (/home/reggie/code/golang/helloworld)
         (/home/reggie/go/src/helloworld)

What does this error mean? What is wrong here?

[bombsimon]

golangci-lint runs on package level whereas go run main.go only targets a single file. Furthermore, typecheck is not a real linter but a way of displaying compilation errors.

If you try go build ./... I suspect you will get a similar error. The error in itself is more related to Go and it looks like one of your files imports a package called helloworld which is found in multiple locations on your system.

[aphsa]

Go build does not cause errors. And there is NO second package named helloworld as golangci-lint reports.

$ go build ./

$ ll
total 1800
-rw-rw-r-- 1 reggie reggie      72 Feb 12 21:26 main.go
-rw-rw-r-- 1 reggie reggie      27 Feb 13 02:00 go.mod
-rwxrwxr-x 1 reggie reggie 1834847 Feb 15 19:13 helloworld*

$ golangci-lint run
ERRO [linters_context] typechecking error: ambiguous import: found package helloworld in multiple modules:
        helloworld (/home/reggie/code/golang/helloworld)
         (/home/reggie/go/src/helloworld)

ls -l /home/reggie/go/src/helloworld
ls: cannot access '/home/reggie/go/src/helloworld': No such file or directory

$ pwd
/home/reggie/code/golang/helloworld

$ ls -l /home/reggie/code/golang/helloworld
total 1800
-rw-rw-r-- 1 reggie reggie      27 Feb 13 02:00 go.mod
-rwxrwxr-x 1 reggie reggie 1834847 Feb 15 19:13 helloworld
-rw-rw-r-- 1 reggie reggie      72 Feb 12 21:26 main.go

[ldez]

I don't reproduce your issue.

$ rm -rf helloworld

$ mkdir helloworld && cd $_

$ go mod init helloworld
go: creating new go.mod: module helloworld

$ cat > main.go  <<EOF
package main

import "fmt"

func main() {
        fmt.Println("hello world")
}
EOF

$ go version
go version go1.20.1 linux/amd64

$ go run .
hello world

$ golangci-lint version
golangci-lint has version 1.51.1 built from b87d2c19 on 2023-02-05T13:06:33Z

$ golangci-lint run -v                
INFO [config_reader] Config search paths: [./ ./helloworld /home/ldez/sources/experimental/helloworld /home/ldez /home /] 
INFO [lintersdb] Active 7 linters: [errcheck gosimple govet ineffassign staticcheck typecheck unused] 
INFO [loader] Go packages loading at mode 575 (compiled_files|files|imports|name|types_sizes|deps|exports_file) took 97.591537ms 
INFO [runner/filename_unadjuster] Pre-built 0 adjustments in 79.957µs 
INFO [linters_context/goanalysis] analyzers took 0s with no stages 
INFO [runner] processing took 2.022µs with stages: max_same_issues: 278ns, nolint: 242ns, cgo: 182ns, path_prettifier: 157ns, skip_dirs: 145ns, filename_unadjuster: 144ns, autogenerated_exclude: 143ns, identifier_marker: 135ns, skip_files: 127ns, source_code: 112ns, max_from_linter: 83ns, exclude: 33ns, diff: 32ns, path_shortener: 32ns, sort_results: 32ns, path_prefixer: 29ns, exclude-rules: 29ns, severity-rules: 29ns, uniq_by_line: 29ns, max_per_file_from_linter: 29ns 
INFO [runner] linters took 14.712564ms with stages: goanalysis_metalinter: 14.688669ms 
INFO File cache stats: 0 entries of total size 0B 
INFO Memory: 3 samples, avg is 35.2MB, max is 44.1MB 
INFO Execution took 115.245986ms    

[ldez]

Your error message seems clear:

found package helloworld in multiple modules:
helloworld (/home/reggie/code/golang/helloworld)
(/home/reggie/go/src/helloworld)

A module name must be unique but you have 2 times the same module: one in your GOPATH, and one outside of the GOPATH.

The module name with one word must be avoided because it's too close to standard lib import, I recommend using 3 levels module name (ex: github.com/foo/bar)

If you remove /home/reggie/go/src/helloworld (it's inside the GOPATH) the problem will disappear.

Also, I think you have something inside your Go env (go env) that creates this problem because even if I try to do the exact same thing as you (same module inside and outside the GOPATH) I don't reproduce your issue.

[aphsa]

How do I fix the GOPATH? My go env looks like below. There is no directory named /home/reggie/.config/go either.

GO111MODULE=""
GOARCH="amd64"
GOBIN=""
GOCACHE="/home/reggie/.cache/go-build"
GOENV="/home/reggie/.config/go/env"
GOEXE=""
GOEXPERIMENT=""
GOFLAGS=""
GOHOSTARCH="amd64"
GOHOSTOS="linux"
GOINSECURE=""
GOMODCACHE="/home/reggie/go/pkg/mod"
GONOPROXY=""
GONOSUMDB=""
GOOS="linux"
GOPATH="/home/reggie/go"
GOPRIVATE=""
GOPROXY="https://proxy.golang.org,direct"
GOROOT="/home/reggie/go"
GOSUMDB="sum.golang.org"
GOTMPDIR=""
GOTOOLDIR="/home/reggie/go/pkg/tool/linux_amd64"
GOVCS=""
GOVERSION="go1.20"
GCCGO="gccgo"
GOAMD64="v1"
AR="ar"
CC="gcc"
CXX="g++"
CGO_ENABLED="1"
GOMOD="/home/reggie/code/helloworld/go.mod"
GOWORK=""
CGO_CFLAGS="-O2 -g"
CGO_CPPFLAGS=""
CGO_CXXFLAGS="-O2 -g"
CGO_FFLAGS="-O2 -g"
CGO_LDFLAGS="-O2 -g"
PKG_CONFIG="pkg-config"
GOGCCFLAGS="-fPIC -m64 -pthread -Wl,--no-gc-sections -fmessage-length=0 -fdebug-prefix-map=/tmp/go-build1287203070=/tmp/go-build -gno-record-gcc-switches"

[aphsa]

Note there is no GOPATH environment variable set anywhere.

 echo $GOPATH

However I found out this works! Why is that?

GOPATH=$(go env GOPATH) golangci-lint  run --enable-all
WARN [runner] The linter 'varcheck' is deprecated (since v1.49.0) due to: The owner seems to have abandoned the linter.  Replaced by unused.
WARN [runner] The linter 'ifshort' is deprecated (since v1.48.0) due to: The repository of the linter has been deprecated by the owner.
WARN [runner] The linter 'deadcode' is deprecated (since v1.49.0) due to: The owner seems to have abandoned the linter.  Replaced by unused.
WARN [runner] The linter 'exhaustivestruct' is deprecated (since v1.46.0) due to: The owner seems to have abandoned the linter.  Replaced by exhaustruct.
WARN [runner] The linter 'interfacer' is deprecated (since v1.38.0) due to: The repository of the linter has been archived by the owner.
WARN [runner] The linter 'structcheck' is deprecated (since v1.49.0) due to: The owner seems to have abandoned the linter.  Replaced by unused.
WARN [runner] The linter 'nosnakecase' is deprecated (since v1.48.1) due to: The repository of the linter has been deprecated by the owner.  Replaced by revive(var-naming).
WARN [runner] The linter 'scopelint' is deprecated (since v1.39.0) due to: The repository of the linter has been deprecated by the owner.  Replaced by exportloopref.
WARN [runner] The linter 'golint' is deprecated (since v1.41.0) due to: The repository of the linter has been archived by the owner.  Replaced by revive.
WARN [runner] The linter 'maligned' is deprecated (since v1.38.0) due to: The repository of the linter has been archived by the owner.  Replaced by govet 'fieldalignment'.
WARN [linters_context] rowserrcheck is disabled because of generics. You can track the evolution of the generics support by following the https://github.com/golangci/golangci-lint/issues/2649.
WARN [linters_context] sqlclosecheck is disabled because of generics. You can track the evolution of the generics support by following the https://github.com/golangci/golangci-lint/issues/2649.
WARN [linters_context] structcheck is disabled because of generics. You can track the evolution of the generics support by following the https://github.com/golangci/golangci-lint/issues/2649.
WARN [linters_context] wastedassign is disabled because of generics. You can track the evolution of the generics support by following the https://github.com/golangci/golangci-lint/issues/2649.
main.go:6:2: use of `fmt.Println` forbidden by pattern `^(fmt\.Print(|f|ln)|print|println)$` (forbidigo)
        fmt.Println("hello world")