README.md

Vendoring support

Go 1.5 introduced the concept of vendor. Go 1.11 (and modules) retains support for vendor. This is useful to ensure that all files used for a build are stored together in a single file tree. In addition, this allows interoperation with older versions of Go given older versions understand how to consume the vendor directory created by go mod vendor.

More information about the relationship between Go modules and vendor can be found in the vendoring FAQ on the wiki.

This example shows how to use go mod vendor to manage the vendor directory.

Walkthrough

Create a module:

$ mkdir -p /home/gopher/scratchpad/hello
$ cd /home/gopher/scratchpad/hello
$ go mod init example.com/hello
go: creating new go.mod: module example.com/hello

Add a simple dependency to a main package in our module:

$ cat hello.go
package main

import (
	"fmt"
	"rsc.io/quote"
)

func main() {
	fmt.Println(quote.Hello())
}

Run as a quick "test":

$ go run .
go: finding rsc.io/quote v1.5.2
go: downloading rsc.io/quote v1.5.2
go: extracting rsc.io/quote v1.5.2
go: finding rsc.io/sampler v1.3.0
go: finding golang.org/x/text v0.0.0-20170915032832-14c0d48ead0c
go: downloading rsc.io/sampler v1.3.0
go: extracting rsc.io/sampler v1.3.0
go: downloading golang.org/x/text v0.0.0-20170915032832-14c0d48ead0c
go: extracting golang.org/x/text v0.0.0-20170915032832-14c0d48ead0c
Hello, world.

Review our dependencies:

$ go list -m all
example.com/hello
golang.org/x/text v0.0.0-20170915032832-14c0d48ead0c
rsc.io/quote v1.5.2
rsc.io/sampler v1.3.0

Vendor our dependencies:

$ go mod vendor

Review the contents of vendor:

$ cat vendor/modules.txt
# golang.org/x/text v0.0.0-20170915032832-14c0d48ead0c
golang.org/x/text/language
golang.org/x/text/internal/tag
# rsc.io/quote v1.5.2
rsc.io/quote
# rsc.io/sampler v1.3.0
rsc.io/sampler
$ find vendor -type d
vendor
vendor/rsc.io
vendor/rsc.io/sampler
vendor/rsc.io/quote
vendor/golang.org
vendor/golang.org/x
vendor/golang.org/x/text
vendor/golang.org/x/text/internal
vendor/golang.org/x/text/internal/tag
vendor/golang.org/x/text/language

Re-run our "test" using vendor:

$ go run -mod=vendor .
Hello, world.

For more information about the -mod flag see go help modules.

Version details

go version go1.12.5 linux/amd64