John Siu Blog

How to use golang workspaces(go.work)? And What problem does it solve?

Need Go > 1.18

The Issue

Take my own projects as example:

• go-mygit
• go-gitapi
• go-helper

go-mygit is a command line tool using go-gitapi and go-helper as libraries. When I was developing go-mygit, I was constantly changing go-gitapi and expanding go-helper. In the past, I had two choices:

1. Move go-gitapi and go-helper into go-mygit and split them later.
2. Keep updating them separately, keep doing git tag, push and go get -u for every single change.

Both methods work, but very cumbersome.

How To

This new Go feature changed all of that. With workspaces setup, go build and other Go tools will use go-gitapi and go-helper source tree when dealing with go-mygit.

With directory layout:

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.
├── go-gitapi/
├── go-helper/
└── go-mygit/

Do following:

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cd go-mygit
go work init

This creates a new fille, go.work. To add current directory:

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go work use .

Then add library:

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go work use ../go-gitapi
go work use ../go-helper

From now on, doing go build inside go-mygit folder will compile with code from ../go-gitapi and ../go-helper, not package cache.

We no longer have to tag/push libraries before testing with the main project. And more importantly, VS Code Go extension is doing syntax checking accordingly!!!