Automatically define GOPATH on a per project basis

Question

For every project I create, I have to do export GOPATH={path_to_project} every time I cd into the project dir. There has to be an easier way. Isn't there some way I can create a .bashrc or .bash_profile file for a given directory to define the GOPATH for that project?

For example, I have two go projects A and B. If I have a singular GOPATH that isn't redefined when I move between projects, then binaries for both projects will be stored in the same place. More importantly, binaries for third party libraries will be stored in the same place, so I have no way of maintaining multiple versions of the same library on a per project basis.

However, if I am able to define GOPATH on a per project basis, then all binaries and third party libraries are project dependent. This seems to be the common way of handling package management in most other language environments (ruby rbenv, python vertiualenv, etc.)

Answer 1

(Q2 2018: Note that with the vgo (now "module") project, GOPATH might end up being deprecated in favor of a project-based workflow. That would avoid the manual project-based GOPATH I was proposing below, two years ago)

With Go 1.11 (August 2018), GOPATH can be optional, with modules.

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You have a similar idea expressed in Manage multiple GOPATH dirs with ease, by Herbert Fischer (hgfischer), for a Linux/Unix environment (base on the question already mention in the comments above):

Just include the following snippet in your ~/.bashrc (or ~/.bash_profile) and reload your shell environment with source ~/.bashrc.
This snippet will create a shell function that will override the builtin command cd with a customized one that scans the entered directory, and every other above, for a file named .gopath.

cd () {     builtin cd "$@"     cdir=$PWD     while [ "$cdir" != "/" ]; do         if [ -e "$cdir/.gopath" ]; then             export GOPATH=$cdir             break         fi         cdir=$(dirname "$cdir")     done } 

Now you just need to create a .gopath file in every directory you want as your GOPATH and every time you enter this directory, the redefined cd function will set the GOPATH of your current environment to this directory.

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Update 2017: if you don't want to modify your environment, you can still use one GOPATH per project, by opening the src folder of that project in Visual Studio Code (vscode, which is a multi-platform IDE), combined with the extension "Go for Visual Studio Code".

In that IDE, you can:

• keep your global unique GOPATH in a setting called go.toolsGopath.
• infer your current GOPATH with a setting called go.inferGopath

That way, VSCode will install a collection of tools in your global GOPATH (for you to use outside VSCode as well).
See "Go tools that the Go extension depends on": godep, golint, guru, godoc, ...

And yet, your GOPATH for your project will be the parent folder of src:

That works when you compile/install your project from the IDE.
If you want to do it from the command line, the original answer above would still apply.

Answer 2

You can use a tool like autoenv to set up a script that is automatically executed when you cd into a particular directory.

For your purposes, an example /happy/go/path/yay/.env file might look like:

export GOPATH="/happy/go/path/yay" export PATH="$GOPATH/bin:$PATH"