Skip to main content

Getting Started

Install​

CodePerfect only supports MacOS. There are no plans to port to Windows or Linux.

  1. Download the appropriate binary for your architecture.
  2. Unzip and drag CodePerfect.app into your Applications folder and run it.
danger

CodePerfect is not codesigned. I'm no longer actively developing this project and have no other use for an Apple Developer membership. Please search online to see how to bypass the codesign warning, or build yourself from source.

Setup​

CodePerfect requires Go version 1.13+. You can use the official installer for your platform, or a package manager like brew or choco.

Find Go installation (automatic)​

By default, CodePerfect uses whatever go binary your terminal does, which it detects by running which go in bash. The way to make the go binary findable is to ensure it's in your PATH.

note

If you use the official installer, it should set your system PATH for you. If you used a package manager, you may or may not need to set the PATH manually.

Find Go installation (manual)​

You can also manually tell CodePerfect the exact path of your go binary. Create a file ~/.cpgobin, and put the full absolute path inside.

This is the path to the go binary itself, not the folder containing it. E.g. you want /opt/homebrew/bin/go, not /opt/homebrew/bin.

Projects​

CodePerfect doesn't really have the concept of a project. It simply knows how to read a Go module or workspace. When you open CodePerfect, it prompts you to select a folder.

  • Module: CodePerfect can open a single module. In this case, it expects a folder containing a go.mod file at the root of the folder.
  • Workspace: CodePerfect can open any folder that is, or belongs to, a workspace. This means any folder that contains a go.work, or has a parent folder that contains a go.work. CodePerfect runs go env GOWORK to detect what workspace (if any) the current folder belongs to.

When you open a folder, CodePerfect creates some files inside for internal use:

  • .cpproj — project-specific settings
  • .cpdb — the index of your code

We recommend committing .cpproj to version control (for consistent build and debug configurations), but excluding .cpdb (it needs to be rebuilt on each machine). Note that none of these files are human-readable.

Open an existing project​

CodePerfect can open any Go module or workspace as described above. Just run CodePerfect and select the right folder.

If you're opening a pre-existing project, CodePerfect uses go list -m all to find your dependencies, and if you have un-downloaded dependencies, the indexer will naturally be unable to find them. You can ensure they've been downloaded:

go mod tidy

Create a new project​

You can initialize a Go module the usual way:

go mod init <YOUR_MODULE_PATH>

You can also create a workspace; see the Go docs.

Indexing​

CodePerfect automatically scans and parses your code to understand it. While it's doing that, the bottom right will display a red INDEXING indicator. During this time, CodePerfect cannot provide code intelligence, and features like autocomplete will be disabled. When it's done indexing, the indicator will become a green INDEX READY.

If you click the indicator, you can see what the indexer is doing.

The indexer needs your dependencies to be downloaded (so it can index them). If you opened the project, let the indexer run, and then later downloaded the dependencies, you can run Tools > Rescan Index to pick up the new modules.

Troubleshooting the indexer​

In theory the indexer runs in the background and automagically keeps up to date as your code and dependencies change. If it's ever broken or giving you incorrect results, however, there are two fixes you can try:

  • Tools > Rescan Index looks for missing and changed packages, and processes them. Most of the time, this should fix your problem. This also runs when you restart CodePerfect.

  • Tools > Obliterate and Recreate Index is a more drastic option that will completely re-index everything, as if you were opening a folder for the first time.

Automatic updates​

CodePerfect no longer automatically updates. It's no longer really in development anyway. But you can always grab the latest version from the website or the latest source from Github.