How to Use Vendoring in Go

Vendoring is a way to put dependencies in a Go project without having to mess with the GOPATH. The idea is simple, that is to put the dependencies in a directory called "vendor".

awesomego/
|-- foo (this directory contains a library, i.e. non-main package)
|   `-- foo.go
|-- main.go (this is the main program)
`-- vendor (this is where the third-party libs live)
    `-- goini
        |-- goini.go
        |-- goini_test.go
        |-- LICENSE
        |-- README.md
        `-- testdata
            |-- test_expected.ini
            `-- test.ini

The project structure above has the following benefits.

1. It can be used to build a library.
2. It can be used to build an executable.
3. It is go-gettable.

This is an example of using it in a standard Go workspace.

go-workspace/
`-- src
    `-- awesomego
        |-- foo
        |   `-- foo.go
        |-- main.go
        `-- vendor
            `-- goini
                |-- goini.go
                |-- goini_test.go
                |-- LICENSE
                |-- README.md
                `-- testdata
                    |-- test_expected.ini
                    `-- test.ini

To build it as a library:

GOPATH=`pwd` go install awesomego/foo

To build it as an executable:

GOPATH=`pwd` go install awesomego