gci linter no longer autofixing import orders

[killianmuldoon]

gci linter is no longer fixing import order with make lint-fix. This issue was noted in #6348. The errors from the linter are opaque making fixing import order a manual and time consuming process for maintainers - and very discouraging for all contributors.

It seems from here that the autofix was disabled in a recent version c/f golangci/golangci-lint#2604. I'm still researching why this occurred and will update with any information here.

We can either

• remove gci from our golangci-lint.
• or downgrade to an older version, i.e. roll back ✨Bump to golangci-lint v1.45.2 #6335

Until the linter's behaviour in autofixing comes back in line with expectations. I'm in favour of doing a downgrade - gci was really useful when make lint-fix was working.

/kind bug
[One or more /area label. See https://github.com/kubernetes-sigs/cluster-api/labels?q=area for the list of labels]

[killianmuldoon]

/assign

[sbueringer]

Hm, could it be an alternative to call gci directly as part of lint-fix? I think they did something similar here: https://github.com/vmware-tanzu/cartographer/pull/691/files

(although I would still run gci via golangci-lint)

I think we need this only until they fixed it in golangci-lint/gci.

[vincepri]

Are folks maintaining golanci-lint aware of this issue?

[killianmuldoon]

There's an issue at golangci/golangci-lint#2604
And a PR with a fix at golangci/golangci-lint#2653

[fabriziopandini]

/milestone v1.2

[sbueringer]

I think we have a few options:

1. just wait until the fix is merged in golangci-lint and then upgrade (i.e. ignore the issue until then)
2. downgrade now and then upgrade again once it's fixed (we can't upgrade golangci-lint until then)
3. provide a way to run gci "fix" via make (e.g. as part of lint-fix)

Not sure what the best way forward is, given that we don't know how soon they'll fix it. Maybe 2 for now and 3 if they don't fix it soon?

[sbueringer]

Okay PR is merged, so we picked 2. Let's see what happens upstream in golangci-lint

[killianmuldoon]

golangci/golangci-lint#2892

This PR fixes the issue in golangci-lint. We should try to bump the version as soon as there's a new release.

[chrischdi]

Just because I did a lookup already the second time:

Hello, there are some minor features that have been merged, so we will not create a patch release. [0]

So we have to wait for a v1.47 release.