Description
The golang.org/x/lint aka github.com/golang/lint program is essentially unmaintained. There have been no substantive changes since 2018. The issue tracker (https://github.com/golang/lint/issues) has 85 open issues as I write this, the majority of them with no comments.
Because programmers have been trained over the years to use linters, and because this is a program in the official Go repo named "lint", it looks like this is the lint program recommended by the Go project. But it isn't. As it says in the README file (https://go.googlesource.com/lint/+/refs/heads/master/README.md) this is a style guide checker for Effective Go (https://golang.org/doc/effective_go.html) and the list of code review comments on the Go wiki (https://golang.org/wiki/CodeReviewComments). While those are good aspects of Go style, they are not the only possible Go style. People can reasonably prefer different styles. They can reasonably want to adopt some aspects of the style or not. They can reasonably want additional checks. They can reasonably want various knobs and options for a linter. The golang.org/x/lint package does none of those things. In particular, as its README file says: "We will not be adding pragmas or other knobs to suppress specific warnings."
There is a heated discussion on the (closed) issue golang/lint#263 about what exactly this lint program is for.
In short, I think that golang.org/x/lint has become an attractive nuisance: an unmaintained program that people want to find to be useful for their purposes, but often isn't. It does not bring people joy. We should throw it out.
I propose that we explicitly freeze the repository, and create a plan for removing it entirely.
This will free up the mental space for other people to write lint programs, perhaps based on this one, that will be maintained and useful. It will get the Go project out of the business of appearing to recommend a program that we don't actually maintain.
(Alternatively, we could decide to actively maintain it, but I don't know who would actually do that.)