setup and teardown for each test using std testing package

Update for Go 1.14 (Q1 2020)

The testing package now supports cleanup functions, called after a test or benchmark has finished, by calling T.Cleanup or B.Cleanup respectively. Example,

func TestFunction(t *testing.T) {
    // setup code
    // sub-tests
    t.Run() 
    t.Run() 
    ...
    // cleanup
    t.Cleanup(func(){
        //tear-down code
    })
}

Here, t.Cleanup runs after the test and all its sub-tests are complete.

Original answer (Feb. 2017)
As shown in the article “Go unit test setup and teardown” from Kare Nuorteva, you could use a setup function which returns… a teardown function to you defer.

See this gist:

func setupSubTest(t *testing.T) func(t *testing.T) {
    t.Log("setup sub test")
    return func(t *testing.T) {
        t.Log("teardown sub test")
    }
}

The setup function is in charge of defining and returning the teardown one.

For each test, for instance in a table-driven test scenario:

for _, tc := range cases {
    t.Run(tc.name, func(t *testing.T) {
        teardownSubTest := setupSubTest(t)
        defer teardownSubTest(t)

        result := Sum(tc.a, tc.b)
        if result != tc.expected {
            t.Fatalf("expected sum %v, but got %v", tc.expected, result)
        }
    })
}