Project Layout

Starting from a clean slate is always a pleasure when it comes to a new software project. There is no legacy yet, no technical debt and any other sources of anxiety. The pleasant experience can be maintained at a high level throughout the project's lifecycle. One of the key contributors to the experience of developing and maintaining a project is its layout, the file and folder structure and organisation. In the world of Go it's extremely important because a structure can be both helping and limiting, depending on how it's implemented.

This unit focuses on the project layout design. A layout design is how the folders and files are organised in a codebase, and thus in the repository containing the codebase. A layout sets the stage for all further design and architecture decisions for a project, such as package layout, logical and functional grouping. It also affects maintenance routines like producing build artefacts, CI and CD, rolling out and shipping to the user.

Depending on whether a layout is good or not, it may either significantly help and simplify everyday tasks, or it can make them quite complicated and poor. A good project layout helps you leverage and benefit from technology, whereas with a bad design any change to the structure is more of a fight with technology.

The importance of creating and following a good layout is clear. You create a project once, and this operation is technically quick and easy. But you have to work with the project until it's sunsetted, and this may and should last for years. The ease of creating a new folder hides the importance of putting a thought into how to set a project in a way that's both helping, convenient and makes sense. It's better to take some time to think about how this is going to look like in a week, a month, half a year, and two years from now. If this is done before anything is created, then working on the project will be much easier.

The rest of the unit covers the following:

• Good vs. Bad project layout
• Layout for a library
• Single application layout
• Layout for a monolithic, multi-service repository
• Versioning and Go
• Creating a Changelog.

Now, let's figure out what makes a project layout good and bad.

Disclaimer: Terms "good" and "bad" are used as simple words to describe something that feels right, positive, helps and supports, as opposed to something that is less right, inconvenient, slows down and distracts. They're used not as judgements or labels, but as synonyms for respective broader terms.