Organizing a multiple-file Go project

go
Blacksad picture Blacksad · Apr 3, 2012 · Viewed 127k times · Source

Note: this question is related to this one, but two years is a very long time in Go history.

What is the standard way to organize a Go project during development ?

My project is a single package mypack, so I guess I put all the .go files in a mypack directory.

But then, I would like to test it during development so I need at least a file declaring the main package, so that I can do go run trypack.go

How should I organize this ? Do I need to do go install mypack each time I want to try it ?

Answer

jdi picture jdi · Apr 3, 2012

I would recommend reviewing this page on How to Write Go Code

It documents both how to structure your project in a go build friendly way, and also how to write tests. Tests do not need to be a cmd using the main package. They can simply be TestX named functions as part of each package, and then go test will discover them.

The structure suggested in that link in your question is a bit outdated, now with the release of Go 1. You no longer would need to place a pkg directory under src. The only 3 spec-related directories are the 3 in the root of your GOPATH: bin, pkg, src . Underneath src, you can simply place your project mypack, and underneath that is all of your .go files including the mypack_test.go

go build will then build into the root level pkg and bin.

So your GOPATH might look like this:

~/projects/
    bin/
    pkg/
    src/
      mypack/
        foo.go
        bar.go
        mypack_test.go

export GOPATH=$HOME/projects

$ go build mypack
$ go test mypack

Update: as of >= Go 1.11, the Module system is now a standard part of the tooling and the GOPATH concept is close to becoming obsolete.

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