cmd/go: no helpful error message for "no Go files" with modules #27122

FiloSottile · 2018-08-21T15:14:12Z

Without modules, the go tool informs me that I'm trying to build a package with no Go files:

$ go1.11rc1 build ./vcs-test
can't load package: package golang.org/x/build/vcs-test: no Go files in /Users/filippo/src/golang.org/x/build/vcs-test

With modules, I get an obscure error:

$ GO111MODULE=on go1.11rc1 build ./vcs-test
go: finding golang.org/x/build/vcs-test latest
can't load package: package golang.org/x/build/vcs-test: unknown import path "golang.org/x/build/vcs-test": cannot find module providing package golang.org/x/build/vcs-test

The text was updated successfully, but these errors were encountered:

thepudds · 2018-12-28T18:32:30Z

Note that this relatively unhelpful error message still occurs with 1.11.4 and 1.12beta1.

# Failing example. There are no .go files (and hence no package) in the same directory 
# as the main `go.mod` file.

mkdir -p /tmp/scratchpad/bitbucket-module-bad
cd /tmp/scratchpad/bitbucket-module-bad
go mod init bitbucket.org/foo/bar

mkdir baz
cat <<EOF > baz/baz.go
package baz

func Hello() string { return "Hello from bitbucket.org/foo/bar/baz" }
EOF

cd /tmp/scratchpad/bitbucket-module-bad
go build -v

Fails with:

$ go build -v
Fetching https://bitbucket.org?go-get=1
Parsing meta tags from https://bitbucket.org?go-get=1 (status code 200)
can't load package: package bitbucket.org/foo/bar: unknown import path "bitbucket.org/foo/bar": 
cannot find module providing package bitbucket.org/foo/bar

One solution (as covered in an FAQ on the modules wiki) is go build ./... or other variations.

CC @myitcv @bcmills @heschik

hyangah · 2018-12-28T19:36:47Z

#29268 is related.

crhntr · 2018-12-30T00:39:36Z

I have been writing Go (it was the first language I really learned well) and so ./... seemed normal to me, but I was recently helping a very experienced C# engineer on board onto my team. We were pair-programming and we came across this issue and I used go install ./... and he was a little weirded out but thought it was easy to remember but was unintuitive.

lpar · 2019-01-28T23:15:46Z

Perhaps ./... could be the default if GO111MODULE=on or there's a go.mod file in the current directory?

Failing that, the error message could use some work. can't load package: package projectname: unknown import path "projectname": cannot find module providing package projectname doesn't suggest to me "You forgot to specify which module to compile, maybe with ./...".

thepudds · 2019-04-08T15:51:05Z

#31270 might be a dup of this.

shaneHowearth · 2019-05-31T08:43:28Z

I was following a tutorial for something (gRPC) and the tutorial makes use of modules, so I got to learn about them too \o/

However I had an issue where I had made a mistake and the error message from go build was not very helpful.

Below is pasted the file tree, the root go.mod, the code that was generating the error, the command being executed and the error message. The error turned out to be that the import path was pointed at a directory with no go source files, but the error reported was "cannot find module providing package"

.
.
├── go.mod
├── go.sum
└── part_1
    ├── api
    │   └── proto
    │       └── v1
    │           └── todo-service.proto
    ├── cmd
    │   ├── client-grpc
    │   │   ├── client-grpc
    │   │   └── main.go
    │   └── server
    │       └── main.go
    ├── create_todo_table.sql
    ├── go.sum
    ├── pkg
    │   ├── api
    │   │   └── v1
    │   │       └── todo-service.pb.go
    │   ├── cmd
    │   │   └── server
    │   │       └── server.go
    │   ├── protocol
    │   │   └── grpc
    │   │       └── server.go
    │   └── service
    │       └── v1
    │           ├── todo-service.go
    │           └── todo-service_test.go
    └── third_party
        └── google
            └── protobuf
                ├── any.proto
                ├── api.proto
                ├── compiler
                │   └── plugin.proto
                ├── descriptor.proto
                ├── duration.proto
                ├── empty.proto
                ├── field_mask.proto
                ├── source_context.proto
                ├── struct.proto
                ├── timestamp.proto
                ├── type.proto
                └── wrappers.proto

20 directories, 25 files

=======================================
~/go/src/shane/go.mod
module shane

require (
	github.com/DATA-DOG/go-sqlmock v1.3.3
	github.com/go-sql-driver/mysql v1.4.1
	github.com/golang/protobuf v1.3.1
	google.golang.org/grpc v1.21.0
)
========================================
~/go/src/shane/part_1/cmd/server
package main

import (
	"fmt"
	"os"

	"shane/part_1/pkg/cmd"
)

func main() {
	if err := cmd.RunServer(); err != nil {
		fmt.Fprintf(os.Stderr, "%v\n", err)
		os.Exit(1)
	}
}
========================================

go build . # inside ~/go/src/shane/part_1/cmd/server
main.go:7:2: unknown import path "shane/part_1/pkg/cmd": cannot find module providing package shane/part_1/pkg/cmd

gopherbot · 2019-07-09T21:18:34Z

Change https://golang.org/cl/185345 mentions this issue: cmd/go: rationalize errors in internal/load and internal/modload

bcmills · 2019-12-06T22:19:56Z

This appears to be fixed at head.

~/src/golang.org/x/build$ gotip version
go version devel +0915a19a Fri Dec 6 05:12:15 2019 +0000 linux/amd64

~/src/golang.org/x/build$ GO111MODULE=on gotip build ./vcs-test
can't load package: package ./vcs-test: no Go files in /usr/local/google/home/bcmills/src/golang.org/x/build/vcs-test

~/src/golang.org/x/build$ GO111MODULE=off gotip build ./vcs-test
can't load package: package golang.org/x/build/vcs-test: no Go files in /usr/local/google/home/bcmills/src/golang.org/x/build/vcs-test

This change is a non-minimal fix for #32917, but incidentally fixes several other bugs and makes the error messages much more ergonomic. Updates #32917 Updates #27122 Updates #28459 Updates #29280 Updates #30590 Updates #37214 Updates #36173 Updates #36587 Fixes #36008 Fixes #30992 Change-Id: Iedb26d2e0963697c130df5d0f72e7f83ec2dcf06 Reviewed-on: https://go-review.googlesource.com/c/go/+/185345 Reviewed-by: Michael Matloob <matloob@golang.org> Reviewed-by: Jay Conrod <jayconrod@google.com>

FiloSottile added NeedsInvestigation Someone must examine and confirm this is a valid issue and not a duplicate of an existing one. modules labels Aug 21, 2018

bcmills added this to the Go1.13 milestone Jan 14, 2019

bcmills mentioned this issue Apr 11, 2019

cmd/go: go test reports module missing when no test files in the cwd #31270

Closed

andybons modified the milestones: Go1.13, Go1.14 Jul 8, 2019

rsc modified the milestones: Go1.14, Backlog Oct 9, 2019

bcmills closed this as completed Dec 6, 2019

ahmagdy mentioned this issue Jun 17, 2020

install golint ahmagdy/k8s-pod-scheduler#2

Merged

golang locked and limited conversation to collaborators Dec 5, 2020

gopherbot added the FrozenDueToAge label Dec 5, 2020

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cmd/go: no helpful error message for "no Go files" with modules #27122

cmd/go: no helpful error message for "no Go files" with modules #27122

FiloSottile commented Aug 21, 2018

thepudds commented Dec 28, 2018 •

edited

hyangah commented Dec 28, 2018

crhntr commented Dec 30, 2018 •

edited

lpar commented Jan 28, 2019

thepudds commented Apr 8, 2019

shaneHowearth commented May 31, 2019 •

edited by ALTree

gopherbot commented Jul 9, 2019

bcmills commented Dec 6, 2019

cmd/go: no helpful error message for "no Go files" with modules #27122

cmd/go: no helpful error message for "no Go files" with modules #27122

Comments

FiloSottile commented Aug 21, 2018

thepudds commented Dec 28, 2018 • edited

hyangah commented Dec 28, 2018

crhntr commented Dec 30, 2018 • edited

lpar commented Jan 28, 2019

thepudds commented Apr 8, 2019

shaneHowearth commented May 31, 2019 • edited by ALTree

gopherbot commented Jul 9, 2019

bcmills commented Dec 6, 2019

thepudds commented Dec 28, 2018 •

edited

crhntr commented Dec 30, 2018 •

edited

shaneHowearth commented May 31, 2019 •

edited by ALTree