Golang x/tools/gopls: High CPU usage if a symlink to "/" is present in the project

What did you do?

Clone https://github.com/opencontainers/runc/ and do this:

cd runc
ln -s / gopls-cpu-high

Then open any file in the project and wait 1-3 minutes.

For example, I used:

vim libcontainer/rootfs_linux.go

This should work with any go project that you add the symlink to.

What did you expect to see?

gopls doesn't use 2000% of cpu continously .

I'm not 100% sure gopls can handle this situation nor if it makes sense to do it. I'm mostly reporting it because it took me some hours to figure out (I had a lot of files not tracked and that symlink was a mistake). I'm fine if you want to close as won't fix :-)

What did you see instead?

gopls uses 2000% of the cpu continously.

Build info

golang.org/x/tools/gopls v0.19.1
    golang.org/x/tools/gopls@v0.19.1 h1:Yodhp3rnpnag60lVZrYPYbGMxTlTCIAj/B2Rv7AKuhA=
    github.com/BurntSushi/toml@v1.4.1-0.20240526193622-a339e1f7089c h1:pxW6RcqyfI9/kWtOwnv/G+AzdKuy2ZrqINhenH4HyNs=
    github.com/fatih/camelcase@v1.0.0 h1:hxNvNX/xYBp0ovncs8WyWZrOrpBNub/JfaMvbURyft8=
    github.com/fatih/gomodifytags@v1.17.1-0.20250423142747-f3939df9aa3c h1:dDSgAjoOMp8da3egfz0t2S+t8RGOpEmEXZubcGuc0Bg=
    github.com/fatih/structtag@v1.2.0 h1:/OdNE99OxoI/PqaW/SuSK9uxxT3f/tcSZgon/ssNSx4=
    github.com/google/go-cmp@v0.6.0 h1:ofyhxvXcZhMsU5ulbFiLKl/XBFqE1GSq7atu8tAmTRI=
    golang.org/x/exp/typeparams@v0.0.0-20250218142911-aa4b98e5adaa h1:Br3+0EZZohShrmVVc85znGpxw7Ca8hsUJlrdT/JQGw8=
    golang.org/x/mod@v0.25.0 h1:n7a+ZbQKQA/Ysbyb0/6IbB1H/X41mKgbhfv7AfG/44w=
    golang.org/x/sync@v0.15.0 h1:KWH3jNZsfyT6xfAfKiz6MRNmd46ByHDYaZ7KSkCtdW8=
    golang.org/x/telemetry@v0.0.0-20250417124945-06ef541f3fa3 h1:RXY2+rSHXvxO2Y+gKrPjYVaEoGOqh3VEXFhnWAt1Irg=
    golang.org/x/text@v0.26.0 h1:P42AVeLghgTYr4+xUnTRKDMqpar+PtX7KWuNQL21L8M=
    golang.org/x/tools@v0.34.1-0.20250610205101-c26dd3ba555e h1:XnjOegqwH6kBJoae6InSGbIFPHcLtUT/Eq8HjrZKbmQ=
    golang.org/x/vuln@v1.1.4 h1:Ju8QsuyhX3Hk8ma3CesTbO8vfJD9EvUBgHvkxHBzj0I=
    honnef.co/go/tools@v0.7.0-0.dev.0.20250523013057-bbc2f4dd71ea h1:fj8r9irJSpolAGUdZBxJIRY3lLc4jH2Dt4lwnWyWwpw=
    mvdan.cc/gofumpt@v0.7.0 h1:bg91ttqXmi9y2xawvkuMXyvAA/1ZGJqYAEGjXuP0JXU=
    mvdan.cc/xurls/v2@v2.6.0 h1:3NTZpeTxYVWNSokW3MKeyVkz/j7uYXYiMtXRUfmjbgI=
go: go1.24.4

Comment From: adonovan

Likely a dup of https://github.com/golang/go/issues/70172. The upcoming version of gopls (which you can try out using go install golang.org/x/tools/gopls@v0.20.0-pre.1) features a new implementation of the module index which should greatly reduce the traversal of directories. Please let us know if it helps you.