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Life & fun · February 10, 2026

Deadlog – almost drop-in mutex for debugging Go deadlocks

I've done this same println debugging thing so many times, along with some sed/awk stuff to figure out which call was causing the issue. Now it's a small Go package. With some `runtime.Callers` I can usually find the spot by just swapping the existing Mutex or RWMutex for this one. Sometimes I switch the mu.Lock() defer mu.Unlock() with the LockFunc/RLockFunc to get more detail defer mu.LockFunc()() I almost always initialize it with `deadlog.New(deadlog.WithTrace(1))` and that's plenty. Not the most polished library, but it's not supposed to land in any commit, just a temporary…

Deadlog – almost drop-in mutex for debugging Go deadlocks launched on February 10, 2026 with 30 votes, #669 of 16,628 launches that month and more than 95% of that year's launches.

Visit github.com ↗Alternativestop 4% of February 2026

In plain words

Deadlog is a Go package that helps developers debug mutex deadlocks by serving as a drop-in replacement for standard Mutex or RWMutex. It uses runtime call tracing to identify which code is causing lock contention issues, allowing developers to quickly locate problems without manual debugging. The tool is intentionally minimal and temporary, designed for development-time diagnostics rather than production use.

written from the facts on this page · September 2026

From the sources

Find mutex deadlocks in Go code. . Contribute to stevenctl/deadlog development by creating an account on GitHub.

A Go library for debugging mutex deadlocks with logged wrappers and analysis tools. go get github.com/stevenctl/deadlog Usage Replace sync.Mutex or sync.RWMutex with deadlog.Mutex : import "github.com/stevenctl/deadlog" // Before var mu sync. RWMutex // After var mu = deadlog . New ( deadlog . WithName ( "my-service" )) The API is compatible with both sync.Mutex and sync.RWMutex : // Write lock (sync.Mutex compatible) mu . Lock () defer mu . Unlock () // Read lock (sync.RWMutex compatible) mu . RLock () defer mu . RUnlock () Tracking unreleased locks Use LockFunc() or RLockFunc() to get correlated RELEASED events: unlock := mu . LockFunc () defer unlock () This logs START, ACQUIRED, and…from github.com

In the maker’s words, at launch

I've done this same println debugging thing so many times, along with some sed/awk stuff to figure out which call was causing the issue. Now it's a small Go package. With some `runtime.Callers` I can usually find the spot by just swapping the existing Mutex or RWMutex for this one. Sometimes I switch the…

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