Short IT recipes: shell.nix for golang programming with vscodium

If you use Nix and want a reproducible Go development environment with VSCodium as your editor, a shell.nix file is the cleanest way to get there. The configuration below sets up a full Go toolchain — including the gopls language server, the delve debugger, linters, and code-generation utilities — alongside VSCodium pre-loaded with the official Go extension, GitLens, error highlighting, and a REST client. CGO is enabled together with gcc and sqlite, so packages like go-sqlite3 that rely on C bindings compile without issues. A step-by-step status log is printed during initialisation so you always know what the shell is doing while it loads. All dependencies are pinned to your nixpkgs channel, so every team member or machine gets an identical environment simply by running nix-shell. Once inside the shell, open your project with codium . and everything is ready to go.


{ pkgs ? import <nixpkgs> {

    # Required to allow extensions with non-free licenses (e.g. gitlens)

    config.allowUnfree = true;

  }

}:



let

  vscodiumWithExtensions = pkgs.vscode-with-extensions.override {

    vscode = pkgs.vscodium;

    vscodeExtensions = with pkgs.vscode-extensions; [

      # Go language support (official Go team extension)

      golang.go



      # Git integration

      # Note: mhutchie.git-graph is unfree and has been intentionally removed.

      # Use VSCodium's built-in git view or install git-graph manually.

      eamodio.gitlens



      # General productivity

      streetsidesoftware.code-spell-checker

      usernamehw.errorlens



      # REST client for API testing

      humao.rest-client

    ];

  };



in pkgs.mkShell {

  name = "golang-dev";



  buildInputs = [

    # ── Go toolchain ──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────

    pkgs.go                  # Go compiler & standard tooling (go build, go test…)

    pkgs.gopls               # Official Go language server (used by the extension)

    pkgs.delve               # Go debugger

    pkgs.gotools             # Extra tools: goimports, godoc, etc.

    pkgs.golangci-lint       # Fast, multi-linter runner

    pkgs.gomodifytags        # Struct tag editor (used by vscode-go)

    pkgs.gotests             # Auto-generate table-driven tests

    pkgs.impl                # Generate method stubs for interfaces

    pkgs.go-outline          # JSON representation of Go file outline

    pkgs.gotestsum           # Prettier `go test` output



    # ── Editor ────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────

    vscodiumWithExtensions



    # ── C toolchain (required for CGO / go-sqlite3) ───────────────────────────

    pkgs.gcc

    pkgs.sqlite



    # ── Shell / system utilities ──────────────────────────────────────────────

    pkgs.git

    pkgs.curl

    pkgs.jq                  # Handy for JSON output while developing APIs

  ];



  # ── Environment variables ─────────────────────────────────────────────────

  shellHook = ''

    echo ""

    echo "● Initialising golang-dev shell…"

    echo ""



    # ── Environment ───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────

    echo "  [1/4] Setting up environment variables…"

    export GOPATH="$HOME/go"

    export PATH="$GOPATH/bin:$PATH"

    export GOTELEMETRY=off

    export CGO_ENABLED=1

    echo "        GOPATH=$GOPATH"

    echo "        CGO_ENABLED=$CGO_ENABLED  (sqlite3 / cgo support)"

    echo "        GOTELEMETRY=$GOTELEMETRY"



    # ── Go toolchain ──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────

    echo ""

    echo "  [2/4] Verifying Go toolchain…"

    echo "        go        $(go version 2>/dev/null | awk '{print $3, $4}')"

    echo "        gopls     $(gopls version 2>/dev/null | head -1 || echo 'not found')"

    echo "        delve     $(dlv version 2>/dev/null | head -1 || echo 'not found')"

    echo "        golangci  $(golangci-lint --version 2>/dev/null | head -1 || echo 'not found')"

    echo "        gcc       $(gcc --version 2>/dev/null | head -1 || echo 'not found')"

    echo "        sqlite3   $(sqlite3 --version 2>/dev/null | head -1 || echo 'not found')"



    # ── GOPATH bin ────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────

    echo ""

    echo "  [3/4] Checking GOPATH bin directory…"

    if [ -d "$GOPATH/bin" ]; then

      BIN_COUNT=$(ls "$GOPATH/bin" 2>/dev/null | wc -l | tr -d ' ')

      echo "        $GOPATH/bin  ($BIN_COUNT tools installed)"

    else

      mkdir -p "$GOPATH/bin"

      echo "        $GOPATH/bin created (empty — tools will appear after go install)"

    fi



    # ── Editor ────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────

    echo ""

    echo "  [4/4] Checking VSCodium…"

    if command -v codium &>/dev/null; then

      echo "        $(codium --version 2>/dev/null | head -1 | sed 's/^/codium /')"

    else

      echo "        codium not found in PATH"

    fi



    # ── Ready ─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────

    echo ""

    echo "┌─────────────────────────────────────────┐"

    echo "│  golang-dev shell ready  ✓               │"

    echo "│                                          │"

    echo "│  Run  'codium .'  to open VSCodium       │"

    echo "└─────────────────────────────────────────┘"

    echo ""

  '';

}

Friday, March 27, 2026

shell.nix for golang programming with vscodium