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Comment by chaotic-good | Hacker News Reader

Since import statements do not allow you to specify versions, you have to keep track of which commits of a particular project you trust. I am pretty sure that this problem will be solved, but it currently isn't.

Go forces everybody to use green master policy. Every library is expected to have green master and stable API. If you need to change API of your Go library, you must create new repository.

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Thats sounds alot like the policy in the TeX world, where forks of libraries with breaking changes need a new name. Quite frankly, it's even harder to follow than the occasional breakage at version changes, especially when you try to find out what the "modern version" of what you are using is.

That's not entirely true. Go allows you to tag with the Go version you are aiming for and imports will use that. You do not have to keep your master clean. If you clone explicitly into your GOPATH then you can develop on any branch you like. Similarly, if you use git for version control and so does your library then you can always submodule your dep into your GOPATH and submodules allow you to specific the exact commit you wish to use.

Yes, you do have to keep your master clean. The version tagging thing is only intended to be used when you start depending on a new language feature not available in older versions of Go. For example, if your new code needs something that's only in Go 1.1, you could create a 1.0 tag right before making that change. But people using new versions of Go will get whatever is in master, not whatever is at that tag.

Yes, you can always clone explicitly into a path, but then we're not talking about the module system any more, are we? We're just talking about you copying around files locally. It's misleading to state this like it's the recommended or usual way to do things.

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