Go Concurrency

Goroutine Lifetimes

Normative: When you spawn goroutines, make it clear when or whether they exit.

Goroutines can leak by blocking on channel sends/receives. The GC will not terminate a blocked goroutine even if no other goroutine holds a reference to the channel. Even non-leaking in-flight goroutines cause panics (send on closed channel), data races, memory issues, and resource leaks.

Core Rules

Every goroutine needs a stop mechanism — a predictable end time, a cancellation signal, or both
Code must be able to wait for the goroutine to finish
No goroutines in init() — expose lifecycle methods (Close, Stop, Shutdown) instead
Keep synchronization scoped — constrain to function scope, factor logic into synchronous functions

// Good: Clear lifetime with WaitGroup
var wg sync.WaitGroup
for item := range queue {
    wg.Add(1)
    go func() { defer wg.Done(); process(ctx, item) }()
}
wg.Wait()

// Bad: No way to stop or wait
go func() { for { flush(); time.Sleep(delay) } }()

Test for leaks with go.uber.org/goleak.

Principle: Never start a goroutine without knowing how it will stop.

Read references/GOROUTINE-PATTERNS.md when implementing stop/done channel patterns, goroutine waiting strategies, or lifecycle-managed workers.

Synchronous Functions

Normative: Prefer synchronous functions over asynchronous ones.

Benefit	Why
Localized goroutines	Lifetimes easier to reason about
Avoids leaks and races	Easier to prevent resource leaks and data races
Easier to test	Check input/output without polling
Caller flexibility	Caller adds concurrency when needed

Advisory: It is quite difficult (sometimes impossible) to remove unnecessary concurrency at the caller side. Let the caller add concurrency when needed.

Read references/GOROUTINE-PATTERNS.md when writing synchronous-first APIs that callers may wrap in goroutines.

Zero-value Mutexes

The zero-value of sync.Mutex and sync.RWMutex is valid — almost never need a pointer to a mutex.

// Good: Zero-value is valid    // Bad: Unnecessary pointer
var mu sync.Mutex                mu := new(sync.Mutex)

Don't embed mutexes — use a named mu field to keep Lock/Unlock as implementation details, not exported API.

Read references/SYNC-PRIMITIVES.md when implementing mutex-protected structs or deciding how to structure mutex fields.

Channel Direction

Normative: Specify channel direction where possible.

Direction prevents errors (compiler catches closing a receive-only channel), conveys ownership, and is self-documenting.

func produce(out chan<- int) { /* send-only */ }
func consume(in <-chan int)  { /* receive-only */ }
func transform(in <-chan int, out chan<- int) { /* both */ }

Channel Size: One or None

Channels should have size zero (unbuffered) or one. Any other size requires justification for:

How the size was determined
What prevents the channel from filling under load
What happens when writers block

c := make(chan int)    // unbuffered — Good
c := make(chan int, 1) // size one — Good
c := make(chan int, 64) // arbitrary — needs justification

Read references/SYNC-PRIMITIVES.md when reviewing detailed channel direction examples with error-prone patterns.

Atomic Operations

Use atomic.Bool, atomic.Int64, etc. (stdlib sync/atomic since Go 1.19, or go.uber.org/atomic) for type-safe atomic operations. Raw int32/int64 fields make it easy to forget atomic access on some code paths.

// Good: Type-safe              // Bad: Easy to forget
var running atomic.Bool          var running int32 // atomic
running.Store(true)              atomic.StoreInt32(&running, 1)
running.Load()                   running == 1 // race!

Read references/SYNC-PRIMITIVES.md when choosing between sync/atomic and go.uber.org/atomic, or implementing atomic state flags in structs.

Documenting Concurrency

Advisory: Document thread-safety when it's not obvious from the operation type.

Go users assume read-only operations are safe for concurrent use, and mutating operations are not. Document concurrency when:

Read vs mutating is unclear — e.g., a Lookup that mutates LRU state
API provides synchronization — e.g., thread-safe clients
Interface has concurrency requirements — document in type definition

Context Usage

For context.Context guidance (parameter placement, struct storage, custom types, derivation patterns), see the dedicated go-context skill.

Buffer Pooling with Channels

Use a buffered channel as a free list to reuse allocated buffers. This "leaky buffer" pattern uses select with default for non-blocking operations.

Read references/BUFFER-POOLING.md when implementing a worker pool with reusable buffers or choosing between channel-based pools and sync.Pool.

Advanced Patterns

Read references/ADVANCED-PATTERNS.md when implementing request-response multiplexing with channels of channels, or CPU-bound parallel computation across cores.

Related Skills

Context propagation: See go-context when passing cancellation, deadlines, or request-scoped values through goroutines
Error handling: See go-error-handling when propagating errors from goroutines or using errgroup
Defensive hardening: See go-defensive when protecting shared state at API boundaries or using defer for cleanup
Interface design: See go-interfaces when choosing receiver types for types with sync primitives

External Resources

Never start a goroutine without knowing how it will stop — Dave Cheney
Rethinking Classical Concurrency Patterns — Bryan Mills (GopherCon 2018)
When Go programs end — Go Time podcast
go.uber.org/goleak — Goroutine leak detector for testing
go.uber.org/atomic — Type-safe atomic operations

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