Prefer to explicitly return nil when there is no error for code readability

[gmlewis]

A common pattern in this repo is:

if err != nil {
  return ..., err
}
return ..., err

and we would like to change the last return to explicitly return ..., nil for Go readability.

[sahildua2305]

Oh! It's going to be a lot of work. I think we should split it up.

Also, we should have a static check for this, no?

[dmitshur]

Oh! It's going to be a lot of work. I think we should split it up.

There can be multiple smaller PRs that help resolve this issue, if that's easier. It doesn't have to be just 1 change. A lot of the recent PRs, including #535, have helped this issue already.

Also, we should have a static check for this, no?

I think @dominikh's staticcheck may be able to detect that err variable being returned has a constant nil value in the future.

[gmlewis]

I believe that @willnorris wants to keep the dependencies of go-github extremely small, and most likely will not agree to pull in a new dependency for staticcheck. He can certainly correct me if I've misinterpreted our conversations, though.

[dmitshur]

@gmlewis, there is no reason to pull in staticcheck as a dependency of go-github. It's simply a tool similar to go vet that might get a check in the future that would detect this type of issue, and make it easier for us (the developers/contributors to go-github) to find and resolve any occurrences.

[gmlewis]

Ah, thank you, @shurcooL! This is excellent news. I need to check that out.

[dmitshur]

We're very close, but this is not fully resolved yet, see #546 (comment).