We actually do this at work; our repository is a full GOPATH layout with subdirectories for src/, test/, doc/, etc. We vendor our dependencies. To build, we have scripts at the top-level that compile all of our components (we ship a whole suite of tools in a single repo), run go vet, run tests, etc. The user never needs to set GOPATH. It's not a perfect system, but we've been using it for 3+ years without too much trouble.