golangci/golangci-lint · error

file not found

Error message

file %s not found: %w

What it means

LoadConfiguration first calls findConfigurationFile to locate a config file in the current directory; if that returns an error, this wrapper reports 'file %s not found', embedding the (possibly empty) candidate path. It means no supported configuration file (e.g. YAML variants) could be found in the working directory.

Solutions

1. cd to the project root (or the directory containing the config) before running the command
2. Create a configuration file with a supported extension/name in the current directory (e.g. config.yaml)
3. Rename the existing config to a supported filename/extension the finder recognizes
4. If the path in the message is empty, look at the wrapped error — the real failure is likely 'read directory' from findConfigurationFile, not a missing file

Example fix

// before
$ cd /tmp && tool build   # no config here
// after
$ cd ~/projects/myapp && tool build   # directory containing config.yaml

supported := []string{".yaml", ".yml", ".json"}
entries, err := os.ReadDir(".")
if err != nil { return err }
found := false
for _, e := range entries {
    if slices.Contains(supported, strings.ToLower(filepath.Ext(e.Name()))) { found = true; break }
}
if !found {
    return fmt.Errorf("no config file with extensions %v in %s; run from the project root or create one", supported, ".")
}

cfg, err := LoadConfiguration()
if err != nil {
    var e *fs.PathError
    if strings.Contains(err.Error(), "not found") {
        log.Fatalf("no configuration file found in %s — cd to the project root or create config.yaml", mustGetwd())
    }
    return err
}

When it happens

Trigger: preRunE invoked LoadConfiguration while os.ReadDir(".") found no file whose extension matches a supported configuration format, or findConfigurationFile returned an error that is not a lookup failure — note the message would then be misleading since configFilePath is empty on error.

Common situations: Running the CLI in a directory without the config file instead of the project root, config file renamed to an unsupported extension (e.g. .conf, .yml.gz), file hidden as .tool.yaml when only *.yaml is scanned, or running from a different CWD in CI.

Understand the failure class

Background: "Config file not found": what it means and how to fix it in docker-sync, Maven, Vagrant, Turborepo and other tools — this error's family across 60 libraries.

Related errors

• open file
• can't load config
• can't load config
• can't load config
• configuration file not found

AI-assisted analysis of golangci/golangci-lint@ed7a235d2d (2026-09-02). Data as JSON: /api/errors/319aff271ffcea57. Report an issue: GitHub.

Appendix: source

Thrown at pkg/commands/internal/configuration.go:98

	// Module name.
	Module string `yaml:"module"`

	// Import to use.
	Import string `yaml:"import,omitempty"`

	// Version of the module.
	// Only for module available through a Go proxy.
	Version string `yaml:"version,omitempty"`

	// Path to the local module.
	// Only for local module.
	Path string `yaml:"path,omitempty"`
}

func LoadConfiguration() (*Configuration, error) {
	configFilePath, err := findConfigurationFile()
	if err != nil {
		return nil, fmt.Errorf("file %s not found: %w", configFilePath, err)
	}

	file, err := os.Open(configFilePath)
	if err != nil {
		return nil, fmt.Errorf("file %s open: %w", configFilePath, err)
	}

	defer func() { _ = file.Close() }()

	var cfg Configuration

	err = yaml.NewDecoder(file).Decode(&cfg)
	if err != nil {
		return nil, fmt.Errorf("YAML decoding: %w", err)
	}

	return &cfg, nil
}

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