#11876 is the same one, that had been rejected.

I think that other thread was rejected because (A) lack of other community interest, and (B) no clear path to support go get -u.

But today Go is more popular, i am interested.

And go get -u can be supported by simply removing / emptying the package directory before download.

Removing the package directory is unsafe because the user might have edited the code it contains.

Removing the package directory is unsafe because the user might have edited the code it contains.

For the specific case of a git backend, local modifications seem to be preserved. But i don't think this behavior is contractual. There's no mention of it in https://golang.org/cmd/go/#hdr-Download_and_install_packages_and_dependencies , only to "use the network to update the named packages and their dependencies".

I see some possible options:

1. Destroy any local modifications. Preserving local modifications is a side effect of using git that does not apply to all uses of go get -u.
2. Display a warning with go get -u saying that go get -u -f is required
3. Reinvent several change-tracking features of git... probably unwise.

So How about 1 or 2 above?

From the above, number two seems the least invasive, however that's not what -f is for:

The -f flag, valid only when -u is set, forces get -u not to verify that
each package has been checked out from the source control repository
implied by its import path. This can be useful if the source is a local fork
of the original.

-f is essentially "just do a git pull, don't check that it's pulling from the right place".

If we want this at all, then I suggest just returning an error and failing early, such as when there are local modifications for a versioned package. People will need to remove the package directory to continue with a go get -u with tarball source.

Sorry, I think we're going to decline this proposal.

The Go project isn't interested in building a version control system and once we start thinking through all the implications of implementing this proposal, it starts to sound like a version control system.

Since Github and other version control system hosting providers are free, and Go already has a mechanism to point at an existing VCS from your HTML file on your own domain, we recommend you just use Github + <meta name="go-import" ...>.