Potential resource leak

Reports potential resource leaks, such as unclosed files, SQL rows, HTTP response bodies, or other resources that implement io.Closer and require explicit closure.

Example:

func readFile() ([]byte, error) {
    f, err := os.Open("data.txt") // resource leak: not closed on all paths
    if err != nil {
        return nil, err
    }

    data, err := io.ReadAll(f)
    if err != nil {
        return nil, err // 'f' is not closed here
    }

    f.Close()
    return data, nil
}

Locating this inspection

By ID

Can be used to locate inspection in e.g. Qodana configuration files, where you can quickly enable or disable it, or adjust its settings.

GoResourceLeak

Via Settings dialog

Path to the inspection settings via IntelliJ Platform IDE Settings dialog, when you need to adjust inspection settings directly from your IDE.

Settings or Preferences | Editor | Inspections | Go | Data flow analysis

Inspection ID: GoResourceLeak

Inspection options

Here you can find the description of settings available for the Potential resource leak inspection, and the reference of their default values.

Disable in tests

Option ID:

disableInTests

Default value:

Selected

Excluded functions

Import Path

Option ID:

excludedFunctions.myImportPaths

Default value:

None

Function Name

Option ID:

excludedFunctions.myFunctionNames

Default value:

None

Excluded methods

Import Path

Option ID:

excludedMethods.myImportPaths

Default value:

None

Receiver

Option ID:

excludedMethods.myReceivers

Default value:

None

Method Name

Option ID:

excludedMethods.myMethodNames

Default value:

None

Excluded types

Name

Option ID:

excludedTypes

Default value:

None

Suppressing Inspection

You can suppress this inspection by placing the following comment marker before the code fragment where you no longer want messages from this inspection to appear:

//noinspection GoResourceLeak

More detailed instructions as well as other ways and options that you have can be found in the product documentation:

GoLand 2025.3

Inspection Details
By default bundled with:	GoLand 2025.3, Qodana for Go 2025.3,

Last modified: 04 March 2026