go-unexport

Overview

Tries to unexport as much symbols as possible for a given package under a current workspace.

It's mostly intended for internal/ packages where it's simpler to change API and all your clients are most likely reside in the same repository. In other words, it's useful for big monoliths or command-line apps with a lot of code (which can include legacy).

This tool automatically does unexporting, the only thing you should do is to review the diff and commit it, if it makes sense. If you would like to keep some symbols exported even though they are only used inside the package itself, one can specify skip flag.

Installation and usage (quick start)

This install go-unexport binary under your $GOPATH/bin:

go get github.com/quasilyte/go-unexport

If $GOPATH/bin is under your system $PATH, go-unexport command should be available after that.
This should print the help message:

go-unexport --help

To run unexporting process, do:

go-unexport -v package/import/path

Flag -v turns on verbose mode.

Implementation notice

This tool does zero analysis on its own. I've used go-rename to do all the heavy lifting.

Pros:

• If you trust go-rename, you can trust go-unexport. It's unlikely that it will break your program.
• Maintainance cost is almost close to zero.

Cons:

• The execution time is slow.

Motivation

Keep the number of exported symbols low.

It's hard to maintain minimal exported symbol set for a big projects, so this tool can help a little bit in that regard.