What causes "tag %q disabled and enabled at one moment" in golangci/golangci-lint?

Remove the tag from enabled-tags or disabled-tags so it appears in only one

tag %q disabled and enabled at one moment

Error message

tag %q disabled and enabled at one moment

What it means

gocritic rejects configurations where the same tag is listed both in enabled-tags and disabled-tags, since the resulting state is ambiguous. validateDisabledAndEnabledAtOneMoment detects the overlap and fails configuration validation.

Source

Thrown at pkg/golinters/gocritic/gocritic_settings.go:377

	for check := range s.SettingsPerCheck {
		lcName := strings.ToLower(check)

		if !s.allChecksLowerCased.has(lcName) {
			return fmt.Errorf("invalid check settings: check %q doesn't exist, see %s documentation", check, linterName)
		}

		if !s.inferredEnabledChecksLowerCased.has(lcName) {
			s.logger.Warnf("%s: settings were provided for disabled check %q", check, linterName)
		}
	}

	return nil
}

func (s *settingsWrapper) validateDisabledAndEnabledAtOneMoment() error {
	for _, tag := range s.DisabledTags {
		if slices.Contains(s.EnabledTags, tag) {
			return fmt.Errorf("tag %q disabled and enabled at one moment", tag)
		}
	}

	for _, check := range s.DisabledChecks {
		if slices.Contains(s.EnabledChecks, check) {
			return fmt.Errorf("check %q disabled and enabled at one moment", check)
		}
	}

	return nil
}

func (s *settingsWrapper) validateAtLeastOneCheckerEnabled() error {
	if len(s.inferredEnabledChecks) == 0 {
		return errors.New("eventually all checks were disabled: at least one must be enabled")
	}

	return nil

View on GitHub (pinned to ed7a235d2d)

Solutions

Remove the tag from enabled-tags or disabled-tags so it appears in only one
Decide intent: to re-enable, delete it from disabled-tags; to disable, delete it from enabled-tags
Audit merged configs for duplicate keys before running golangci-lint

Example fix

// before (.golangci.yml)
settings:
  gocritic:
    enabled-tags: [style]
    disabled-tags: [style]
// after
settings:
  gocritic:
    enabled-tags: [style]

Defensive patterns

Strategy: validation

Validate before calling

const enabled = cfg.settings.gocritic['enabled-tags'] ?? []
const disabled = cfg.settings.gocritic['disabled-tags'] ?? []
const clash = disabled.filter(t => enabled.includes(t))
if (clash.length) throw new Error(`tag(s) both enabled and disabled: ${clash.join(', ')}`)

Type guard

const tagsAreDisjoint = (a, b) => !a.some(x => b.includes(x))

Prevention

When merging config overlays, diff enable/disable lists for overlaps
Decide a single place where enable/disable decisions live
Add a pre-commit check asserting disjoint tag lists

When it happens

Trigger: settings.gocritic has a tag appearing in both disabled-tags and enabled-tags, e.g. after merging config fragments or enabling a tag previously disabled.

Common situations: Merging two .golangci.yml files (shared base enables 'style', local config disables 'style'), incremental edits adding an enable without removing the disable.

Related errors

AI-assisted analysis of golangci/golangci-lint@ed7a235d2d (2026-09-02). Data as JSON: /api/errors/6105ff7c8616eaa0. Report an issue: GitHub.