Reference for get command.

What it does

Get downloads the packages named by the import paths, along with their dependencies. It then installs the named packages, like go install.

The go get command will:

  1. Download a package by URL.
  2. Download dependencies.
  3. Store in ~/go/pkg/mod
  4. Compile the package and install to ~/go/bin - as if running go build or go install.

Help

For usage, see link above.

Flag highlights

  • -v - Verbose progress and debug output.
  • -u - Update package. This flag is fine even if the package is not installed yet.
  • -d - Download but do not install.

From the CLI help:

usage: go get [-d] [-f] [-t] [-u] [-v] [-fix] [-insecure] [build flags] [packages]

Get downloads the packages named by the import paths, along with their dependencies. It then installs the named packages, like ‘go install’.

With no package arguments, ‘go get’ applies to Go package in the current directory, if any.

In particular, ‘go get -u’ and ‘go get -u=patch’ update all the dependencies of that package.

With no package arguments and also without -u, ‘go get’ is not much more than ‘go install’, and ‘go get -d’ not much more than ‘go list’.

Examples

Download only

$ go get -d github.com/gorilla/mux

Install target package

Run this anywhere.

$ go get -u github.com/gorilla/mux
$ go get -u github.com/godoctor/godoctor

Install target in a repo

$ cd my-repo
$ go mod init my-project
$ go get -u github.com/urfave/cli/v2

To see what you are installing here and its depednecies, see cli/go.mod.

module github.com/urfave/cli/v2

go 1.11

require (
	github.com/BurntSushi/toml v0.3.1
	github.com/cpuguy83/go-md2man/v2 v2.0.0-20190314233015-f79a8a8ca69d
	gopkg.in/yaml.v2 v2.2.3
)

Install V2.

$ go get -u github.com/cpuguy83/go-md2man/v2

Install command.

$ go get -u github.com/go-delve/delve/cmd/dlv

Install a specific version

go install URL@VERSION

You can add a tag like @1.2.3.

Or @latest if you don’t care about tags.

Note that you can’t specify version on go install as it gives an error.

Install all packages

This looks in subdirectories not just the root main.go.

$ go get ./...

Verbose

$ go get -v github.com/MichaelCurrin/go-project-template

github.com/cpuguy83/go-md2man (download)
github.com/MichaelCurrin/go-project-template/internal
github.com/cpuguy83/go-md2man/vendor/github.com/russross/blackfriday/v2
github.com/cpuguy83/go-md2man/md2man
github.com/urfave/cli
github.com/MichaelCurrin/go-project-template