# cloudwego/goref

Go heap object reference analysis tool

Repository: https://github.com/cloudwego/goref
Canonical: https://ross.abutalabs.com/products/goref
Language: Go
License: Apache-2.0
License Family: permissive
Last push: 2026-03-24T07:04:35+00:00

## Health v2 (maintenance only)
Score: 70/100 (v2, computed 2026-09-02T17:46:02.011165+00:00)
- activity 73, release rhythm 73, longevity 56
- inputs: {"age_days": 784, "days_push": 162, "days_rel": 181, "gap_med": 27.5, "n_releases_24m": 11}
- flags: none
- formula: round(0.45*activity + 0.35*rhythm + 0.20*longevity); archived -> min(score, 10)

## Adoption (not part of the score)
Stars 1019, forks 48 (observed 2026-08-28T04:03:15.091126+00:00)

## What it is
Goref is a Go heap object reference analysis tool built on the Delve debugger. It displays the space and object count distribution of Go heap memory references, outputting profiles viewable with go tool pprof to help locate memory leaks and reduce GC overhead.

## Use cases
- diagnose memory leaks in a running Go process
- find which code paths hold references to heap objects
- analyze heap object distribution to reduce GC overhead
- inspect heap references from a core dump file
- view inuse space and object counts per call stack

## When to choose
- you suspect a Go program is leaking memory and need to pinpoint the holding references
- you want to optimize garbage collector pressure by finding persistent heap objects
- you need to analyze heap state from a core file post-mortem

## When to avoid
- you need general CPU or allocation-rate profiling rather than heap reference analysis
- your Go version is outside the supported go1.19-go1.26 range
- you cannot tolerate the target process being suspended during analysis

## Facets
- artifact type: cli-tool
- maturity: active
- function: monitoring, developer-tools
- domain: developer-tools, performance
- platform: windows, go, cli
- tags: memory-profiling, heap-analysis, memory-leak-detection, garbage-collector, delve, pprof, go-runtime, debugging, command-line, linux, macos

## Member repositories
- cloudwego/goref (main) score 70

## Provenance
- Observed fields: from GitHub, fetched 2026-08-28T04:03:15.091126+00:00.
- Health v2: computed from the inputs above; adoption is never an input.
- Inferred fields (summary, facets, guidance): AI-extracted, prompt v1, taxonomy v1, on 2026-08-30T07:09:22.139060+00:00, confidence not recorded.
  - readme: https://github.com/cloudwego/goref (fetched 2026-08-28T04:03:15.091126+00:00, sha 7944843d00ec)
- Data as of 2026-08-30T08:39:29.467469+00:00.