Welcome! This document gives a good overview of the Go (Golang) modules dependency system. Whether you're new to the technology or looking to learn more, this document should be helpful.
Modules are the dependency management system for Go apps.
That's pretty much it! You might have heard about prior dependency managers out there, but we'll focus just on modules here.
If you're unfamiliar,
ELI5stands for "explain like I'm 5"
You most likely need to go into the root of your project and type the below command, substituting YourModuleName with ... your module's name! (use a VCS name like github.com/arschles/assert)
$ go mod init YourModuleName
That should create a new go.mod file, which is where you'll keep track of all the modules that you import in your app.
You can also run this command inside an existing project to convert from older dependency management systems
If that
go mod initcommand doesn't work and you're doing it with an existing project, you might have to change a few things first. Your best option for now is to go ask in the#moduleschannel of the Gophers Slack group.
You can use go get! Here's how to add a popular testing package, at version v1.5.1:
$ go get github.com/stretchr/[email protected]
go gethas been around forever, but now it supports versions and it knows how to update your dependency tracking files (see below)
You don't have to explicitly delete a module from your project because modules aren't stored in your repository
Instead of deleting, you run a go get with @none at the end, instead of the version number that we saw above:
$ go get github.com/stretchr/testify@none
⚠ That go get command will remove that testify module from your project, and all of the modules in your project that depend on it!
🦾Pro tip! Make sure you have a clean working directory before you remove a module. That way, if you don't like the post-removal world, you can always revert back to the way it was 🚢✌
Good eye! You caught the two new modules-specific files, go.mod and go.sum.
The go.mod has:
module in the file)// indirect ones in there too)The go.sum has:
Ok, so you have a lay of the land. You've probably got a feel for how things are going. Here are some other tips and tricks...
Some programming languages store all your dependencies locally so you had to manually delete them when you’re done with them. Not the case with modern Go!
Go stores all the module code in a read-only central directory on your disk, so one version of a module isn't tied to just your project. If you have lots and lots of projects on your machine, that cache might get big. Delete it with this 🔥:
$ go clean --modcache
⚠ If you do this, you'll have to re-download all of your app's modules next time you build it
What if you forget to run that go get ...@none command from above in the "Deleting" section? You'll end up with modules in your go.mod/go.sum files that your code doesn't need.
Go has your back on that. You can always run this:
$ go mod tidy
...to make sure that your mod files are in sync with the imports in your code.
🦾Pro tip! Just as in the deleting section, make sure you have a clean working directory before you tidy up. That way, if you don't like the post-tidy world, you can always revert back to the way it was 🚢✌
All this talk about transitive dependencies, amirite??? You have two commands to help figure out why you're seeing modules in your go.mod/go.sum (most of the time, you'll have a question about why something is in the go.sum)
$ go mod graph
⬆ shows you a list of modules that you can reconstruct into your dependency graph. The list looks like this:
YourModule module1
YourModule module2
YourModule module3
YourModule module4
YourModule module5
YourModule module6
It's a little more complicated than that, but you get the idea.
🦾 Pro tip! Each row is an edge (arrow) on the dependency graph
$ go mod why
This is kind of like the opposite of go mod graph. The command takes a module name & version, and shows you why it's in your app by tracing it all the way up the dependency graph (hence the name!) to your top-level import.
I hope this document is enough to get you started and keep you going until you hit something really gnarly.
If/when you get to that point, check out the wiki on modules to dive in to details. Things change from time to time with the underlying technology, and this wiki will be kept up to date as time goes on.