NAME

       go - tool for managing Go source code

DESCRIPTION

       Many commands apply to a set of packages:

             go action [packages]

       Usually, [packages] is a list of import paths.

       An  import path that is a rooted path or that begins with a . or .. element is interpreted
       as a file system path and denotes the package in that directory.

       Otherwise, the import path P denotes the package found in the directory DIR/src/P for some
       DIR listed in the GOPATH environment variable (For more details see: 'go help gopath').

       If no import paths are given, the action applies to the package in the current directory.

       There  are  four reserved names for paths that should not be used for packages to be built
       with the go tool:

       • "main" denotes the top-level package in a stand-alone executable.

       • "all" expands to all packages found in all the GOPATH trees. For example, 'go list  all'
         lists  all  the  packages  on the local system. When using modules, "all" expands to all
         packages in the main module and their dependencies,  including  dependencies  needed  by
         tests of any of those.

       • "std" is like all but expands to just the packages in the standard Go library.

       • "cmd" expands to the Go repository's commands and their internal libraries.

       Import paths beginning with "cmd/" only match source code in the Go repository.

       An  import path is a pattern if it includes one or more "..." wildcards, each of which can
       match any string, including the empty  string  and  strings  containing  slashes.  Such  a
       pattern  expands  to all package directories found in the GOPATH trees with names matching
       the patterns.

       To make common patterns more convenient, there are two special cases.  First, /... at  the
       end  of  the  pattern  can  match  an  empty  string, so that net/... matches both net and
       packages in its  subdirectories,  like  net/http.   Second,  any  slash-separated  pattern
       element containing a wildcard never participates in a match of the "vendor" element in the
       path of a vendored package, so that ./... does not match  packages  in  subdirectories  of
       ./vendor  or ./mycode/vendor, but ./vendor/... and ./mycode/vendor/... do.  Note, however,
       that a directory named vendor that  itself  contains  code  is  not  a  vendored  package:
       cmd/vendor  would  be  a  command  named  vendor, and the pattern cmd/... matches it.  See
       golang.org/s/go15vendor for more about vendoring.

       An import path can also name a package to be downloaded from a remote repository. Run  'go
       help importpath' for details.

       Every  package  in  a  program  must  have  a  unique import path.  By convention, this is
       arranged by starting each path with a unique prefix that  belongs  to  you.  For  example,
       paths  used  internally  at  Google  all  begin  with  'google', and paths denoting remote
       repositories begin with the path to the code, such as 'github.com/user/repo'.

       Packages in a program need not have unique package  names,  but  there  are  two  reserved
       package  names  with  special  meaning.  The name main indicates a command, not a library.
       Commands are built into binaries and cannot be imported.  The name documentation indicates
       documentation  for  a  non-Go program in the directory. Files in package documentation are
       ignored by the go command.

       As a special case, if the package list is a list of .go files from a single directory, the
       command  is  applied  to  a  single  synthesized  package  made up of exactly those files,
       ignoring any build constraints in  those  files  and  ignoring  any  other  files  in  the
       directory.

       Directory  and  file  names  that begin with "." or "_" are ignored by the go tool, as are
       directories named "testdata".

AUTHOR

       This manual  page  was  written  by  Michael  Stapelberg  <stapelberg@debian.org>  and  is
       maintained  by  the Debian Go Compiler Team <team+go-compiler@tracker.debian.org> based on
       the output of 'go help packages' for the Debian project (and may be used by others).

                                            2021-09-06                             GO-PACKAGES(7)