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Comment by shanev | Hacker News Reader

Today I had to write some deployment scripts and the value of a fixed GOPATH really dawned on me. No matter which machine I use, I always know my code will be at GOPATH/src/...

I didn't have to fiddle with any paths or env vars in my scripts. It made my day easier. This is an example of something that seems like a good practice only after you've gotten some gray in your beard.

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These global predefined rules lead to long term (several years later) problems. I prefer it when things are configurable and flexible and a technology doesnt try to be the center of the universe. Think of versioning and running multiple versions on same machine. Its like Microsoft with their dll hell. One has to come up with some (undefined, no guidance or built in solution available) way to do it.

Yup, that’s been my own experience too. I’ve really come to appreciate the virtue of GOPATH, and I honestly don’t understand the complaints about it.

Why wouldn’t one want all of one’s code in a single place? What’s wrong with organisation? If one needs to work with different versions, then that’s what version control is for, isn’t it?

Obviously I’m missing something, because my opinion seems to be in the minority. I wonder if it’s because most people are using GUI file managers, which make using directories of code more difficult, while I use emacs and the shell, and so can comfortably manipulate files & directories at scale.

Because different projects need different versions of their dependencies. Do I need a separate GOPATH for each of these projects? I haven't wrangled Go enough to know the right answer to that yet. In my experience with other languages: I'd really prefer to have the dependencies local to the project and not in some global folder that affects all of my projects. I want to be able to make a random project folder anywhere and have the entire thing be self-contained without worrying about anything outside of that folder.

That's what vendor and modules are for.

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