Go convention pack TC-001/TC-002 says stdlib-only testing, but 72% of test files use testify

[sonupreetam]

Observation

A scan of all 216 _test.go files in the project shows:

Style	Files	Percentage
testify (assert + require)	143	66%
testify (assert only)	12	6%
testify (require only)	1	0.5%
testify total	156	72%
stdlib only	60	28%

33 packages use testify exclusively, 14 use stdlib exclusively, and 13 are mixed. The canonical pattern is importing both testify/assert and testify/require together.

Question

• testify assert + require is clearly the de facto testing convention, and docs/contributing/go-code.md already documents testify-specific guidance (the require-vs-assert goroutine rule). But there's no explicit statement anywhere that testify is the preferred assertion style for new test code.

Would it be useful to add a short note to the contributing guide making this explicit? Something like:

"Use testify/assert and testify/require for assertions. Use require for preconditions that should abort the test on failure; use assert everywhere else. Inside goroutines spawned by a test, always use assert (never require), see the goroutine rule below."

This would help new contributors know to reach for testify instead of raw t.Errorf/t.Fatalf, without having to infer it from existing code.

Context

• No testify/mock or testify/suite usage exists anywhere, only assert and require
• docs/contributing/go-code.md already documents testify-specific guidance (the goroutine require vs assert rule from Add testify require-vs-assert goroutine rule to Go contributing guide #5675)
• The stdlib-only holdouts tend to be specific domains (internal/poll, internal/repos, cmd/mint) that appear to predate the testify convention

This could be a good first contribution for an external contributor — update the pack rules and add a note in the contributing guide.

[rh-hemartin]

Hello! Sorry for the late response, I don't see .opencode/uf/packs/go.md, could you send a link to those?

[sonupreetam]

Hey @rh-hemartin, apologies, the .opencode/uf/packs/go.md file is the Go convention packs I referenced is from my local tooling setup, not from this repo. There's no project-level rule mandating stdlib-only testing, so the "conflict" I described doesn't exist. My mistake.

That said, the testify usage data itself is real: ~72% of test files use assert/require, and docs/contributing/go-code.md already documents the require-vs-assert goroutine rule from #5675. I have updated the discussion accordingly. If it would be useful to explicitly document testify as the project's preferred assertion style in the contributing guide (so new contributors don't have to guess), I'm happy to open a PR for that. Otherwise feel free to close this.