Go for Bash Programmers – Part II: CLI Tools

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131 points·reisinge··9 comments

> We named the package hello_test instead of hello. This is possible and it allows for writing tests that use only the public API (identifiers starting with a capital letter) of the tested package as a real user would.

Would be good to highlight here that *_test packages are the sole exception from Go's standard rule of one-package-only per source directory -- special cases being always an unfortunate additional heightening of the beginner's learning curve.

You can also include

package main

files in a non-main package directory (usually sed when implementing go generate)

What people usually do is add a build tag to the file(s) with package main, so they're not compiled on a regular compile/test run. But you can't combine them as such (and you can do this with any package name – there's nothing special about the main package here).

Yep - my point was that _test is not the only exception to the "rule"

No, there is no exception for the "main" package. It's just build tag trickery. You can do this with any package names (although it doesn't make much sense to do so).

Ah, I see what you're objecting to. Yes, it is build tag trickery, and wouldn't work without it

Thanks, done: https://github.com/go-monk/from-bash-to-go-part-ii/commit/16...

I really like this style of showing steps that would be logical for those new to Go even if they're wrong then showing why it didn't work and walking through the fix. Nice linear progression of real-world learning.

Nice! You packed in so many things which are often drip fed, and take folk a while to find

Kudos

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