Go Modules: Why and how – all you need to know in less than an hour

A presentation at Charlotte Go Meetup August 2019 in August 2019 in Charlotte, NC, USA by Baruch Sadogursky

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Refactoring to modules: All you need to know in less than an hour @jbaruch #CharlotteGolang #jcenter http://jfrog.com/shownotes

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Let’s go back in time

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Pre 1.0 (2012) 1.2 (2013) Poll time! 1.5 (2015) 1.8 (2017) 1.11 (2018) @jbaruch #CharlotteGolang #jcenter http://jfrog.com/shownotes

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🎩 @jbaruch #dockercon jfrog.com/shownotes @ErinMeyerINSEAD’s “Culture Map”

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shownotes http://jfrog.com/shownotes Slides Video Links Comments, Ratings Raffle @jbaruch #CharlotteGolang #jcenter http://jfrog.com/shownotes

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Why we have a problem? @jbaruch #CharlotteGolang #jcenter http://jfrog.com/shownotes

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Why we have a problem? @jbaruch #CharlotteGolang #jcenter http://jfrog.com/shownotes

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Dependencies are sources Remote import is a VCS path Simple solution! Dump everything together into one source tree (GOPATH) Compile Profit @jbaruch #CharlotteGolang #jcenter http://jfrog.com/shownotes

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@jbaruch #CharlotteGolang #jcenter http://jfrog.com/shownotes

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Know which dependencies do I use? Know which dependencies did you use? Know which dependencies should I use? But… how do i… Know is it our code that I am editing right now? WTF is going on?! @jbaruch #CharlotteGolang #jcenter http://jfrog.com/shownotes

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Yeah… “ To date, we’ve resorted to an email semaphore whenever someone fixes a bug a package, imploring everyone else to run go get -u. You can probably imagine how successful this is, and how much time is being spent chasing bugs that were already fixed. Dave Cheney @jbaruch #CharlotteGolang #jcenter http://jfrog.com/shownotes

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Duplicate your dependencies “ Check your dependencies to your own VCS. Brad Firzpatrick @jbaruch #CharlotteGolang #jcenter http://jfrog.com/shownotes

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Build your own dependency manager “ It’s not the role of the tooling provided by the language to dictate how you manage your code in the production sense. Andrew Gerrand @jbaruch #CharlotteGolang #jcenter http://jfrog.com/shownotes

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We expect you to already have a homegrown dependency manager “ If you need to build any tooling around what Go uses (Git, Mercurial, Bazaar), you already understand those tools, so it should be straightforward to integrate with whatever system you have. Andrew Gerrand @jbaruch #CharlotteGolang #jcenter http://jfrog.com/shownotes

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Don’t trust what we’ve built “ go-get is nice for playing around, but if you do something serious, like deploying to production, your deploy script now involves fetching some random dude’s stuff on GitHub. Brad Firzpatrick @jbaruch #CharlotteGolang #jcenter http://jfrog.com/shownotes

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godeps.json dependencies.tsv govendor, govend, goven, gv quiz time! trash, garbage, rubbish Weapons manufacturer @jbaruch #CharlotteGolang #jcenter http://jfrog.com/shownotes

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GOPATH + VENDORING = 💖 @jbaruch #CharlotteGolang #jcenter http://jfrog.com/shownotes

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GOPATH, The proud son of the monorepo

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It only allows a single version of any given package to exist at once (per GOPATH) Two huge problems with gopath @jbaruch We cannot programmatically differentiate between code the user is working on and code they merely depend on #CharlotteGolang #jcenter http://jfrog.com/shownotes

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Vendoring – the worst kind of forking “ Copy all of the files at some version from one version control repository and paste them into a different version control repository @jbaruch #CharlotteGolang #jcenter http://jfrog.com/shownotes

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What’s wrong with it (well, what’s not) @jbaruch #CharlotteGolang History, branch, and tag information is lost Pulling updates is impossible It invites modification, divergence, and bad fork It wastes space Good luck finding which version of the code you forked #jcenter http://jfrog.com/shownotes

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You still have no idea what version are you using You have to connect each dependency as a submodule manually Switching branches and forks LOL Working on modules with other teams ROFL Still wrong! @jbaruch #CharlotteGolang #jcenter http://jfrog.com/shownotes

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@jbaruch #CharlotteGolang #jcenter http://jfrog.com/shownotes

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The go dep experiment

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@jbaruch #dockercon jfrog.com/shownotes

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Working in project directories Proper dependency management? Local cache for dependencies Version declarations Conflict resolution @jbaruch #CharlotteGolang #jcenter http://jfrog.com/shownotes

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Conflict on the conflict resolution SAT/SMT vs MVS/SIV

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Enter Go modules

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Enter go modules @jbaruch #CharlotteGolang #jcenter http://jfrog.com/shownotes

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Backwards compatibility and migration @jbaruch #CharlotteGolang go mod init go.mod file is created The rest is the same: imports in code just work #jcenter http://jfrog.com/shownotes

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That’s some serious magic… @jbaruch #CharlotteGolang #jcenter http://jfrog.com/shownotes

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Go modules convert everything (almost?) @jbaruch #CharlotteGolang #jcenter http://jfrog.com/shownotes

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What happens to go.mod when you add import (and run go get/go build)

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Have goimport? no yes Follow goimport URL yes Invalid import path Serve the module no Is it a webpage ? no Is it a VCS? yes Build the module locally Clone the sources Access import path as URL

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Latest compatible version tag

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@jbaruch #CharlotteGolang #jcenter http://jfrog.com/shownotes

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Let’s assume SemVer works (LOL) The latest version of v1.x.x is compatible with v1.0.0 and up Compatible?! Premise: import path string should always be backwards compatible @jbaruch #CharlotteGolang #jcenter http://jfrog.com/shownotes

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] Incompatible code can’t use the same import path Add /v2/ to the module path What about version 2?! Use /v2/ in the import path import “github.com/my/module/v2/mypkg” @jbaruch #CharlotteGolang #jcenter http://jfrog.com/shownotes

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What if it doesn’t have any semver tags?! @jbaruch #CharlotteGolang Pseudo version v0.0.0-yyyymmddhhmmss-abcdefabcdef #jcenter http://jfrog.com/shownotes

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What if (when) I want to ban a version?! @jbaruch #CharlotteGolang You can specify “version X or later”: >= x.y.z You can use exclude or replace for better control #jcenter http://jfrog.com/shownotes

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Houston… I think I lost my module?

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From vendoring to hierarchy of module repositories

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Modules shoud be immutable The <module>@v<version> construct should be immutable That means that github.com/myuser/myrepo/@v/v1.0.0 Should forever be the same…

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But are they really? “ ”Friends don’t let friends do git push -f” Aaron Schlesinger @jbaruch #CharlotteGolang #jcenter http://jfrog.com/shownotes

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Using the goproxy variable export GOPROXY=https://myawesomeproxy.com go get github.com/myuser/myrepo

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Have goimport? no yes Access import path as URL Follow goimport URL yes Invalid import path Serve the module no Is it a webpage ? no Is it a VCS? no Is it a module repo? yes Build the module locally Clone the sources yes

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Keeping modules Local cache ($GOPATH/pkg/mod) Immediate access, not shared, can be wiped… Organizational cache (private proxy) Fast access, requires infra, shared across devs Public cache (public proxy) Highly available, CDN, no infra, free

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Immutable and repeatable builds Immutable dependencies The best way to guarantee issues is force push Lost Dependencies Who doesn’t remember left-pad with Node.js? Internet Issues Even build when GitHub is down!?

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And also faster builds…

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Documentation Stats More value to gocenter @jbaruch Nudges Ratings #CharlotteGolang #jcenter http://jfrog.com/shownotes

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Documentation Active Development # of stars Unit test coverage Licensing # of Dependents Passing unit tests # of forks # of maintainers Score of dependencies Security # of downloads Who the judges are?! @jbaruch #CharlotteGolang #jcenter http://jfrog.com/shownotes

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Twitter ads and q&A jfrog.com/shownotes @jbaruch #CharlotteGolang gocenter.io @jbaruch #CharlotteGolang #jcenter http://jfrog.com/shownotes