README.md

** REVIEW REQUIRED **

This guide is a WIP.

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Introduction

How do you handle the situation where a package on which you depend has not been converted to be a Go module, but you need to "fork" it and depend on the fork?

Whether or not you publish your folk, or maintain it as a local directory, we go into the details here...

Add more detail/intro here

Walkthrough

Create ourselves a simple module that depends on an "old" Go package (rsc.io/pdf at v0.1.1 is "old", non-module code):

$ mkdir hello
$ cd hello
$ go mod init example.com/hello
go: creating new go.mod: module example.com/hello
$ cat <<EOD >hello.go
package main

import (
        "fmt"

        "rsc.io/pdf"
)

func main() {
        fmt.Println(pdf.Point{})
}
EOD

Now we get that specific version of rsc.io/pdf that is known to be "old" Go code:

$ go get rsc.io/[email protected]
go: finding rsc.io/pdf v0.1.1
go: downloading rsc.io/pdf v0.1.1
$ cat go.mod
module example.com/hello

require rsc.io/pdf v0.1.1 // indirect

Now check our code builds and runs:

$ go build
$ ./hello
{0 0}

Create a local copy of rsc.io/pdf and add a replace directive to use it:

$ git clone https://github.com/rsc/pdf pdf
Cloning into 'pdf'...
$ cd pdf
$ git checkout v0.1.1
HEAD is now at 48d0402... pdf: add a Go import comment
$ cd ..
$ cat <<EOD >>go.mod
replace rsc.io/pdf v0.1.1 => ./pdf
EOD
$ cat go.mod
module example.com/hello

require rsc.io/pdf v0.1.1
replace rsc.io/pdf v0.1.1 => ./pdf

Now check our code still builds:

$ go build
go: parsing pdf/go.mod: open /home/gopher/hello/pdf/go.mod: no such file or directory
go: error loading module requirements

It doesn't; seems we need to mark that directory as a Go module with a go.mod:

$ cd pdf
$ cat <<EOD >go.mod
module rsc.io/pdf
EOD
$ cd ..

Now check our code builds and runs:

$ go build
$ ./hello
{0 0}

Version details

go version go1.11.2 linux/amd64