How to do "go get" on a specific tag of a github repository

I am trying to compile the InfluxDB database (version v0.8.8) using go get github.com/influxdb/influxdb

But this pulls the master branch, and I need the v0.8.8 tag.

I have tried to do: go get github.com/influxdb/influxdb/releases/tag/v0.8.8 but this fails saying unable to find.

I also tried to do a regular go get of the master branch, and then manually checking out the tag using git in GOPATH/src/github... in order to set the corret version.

The problem using the last approach is that when I try to pull the dependencies with go get -u -f ./... it tries to find them in the master branch, and some of them do not exist on the master branch...

TL;DR: perform go get on a specific github tag, and pull the correct dependencies.

It is not possible using the go get tool. Instead you need to use a third party go package management tool or create your own forks for the packages that you wish to manage more fine grained.

Spoke to a guy that works at Google and he acknowledged this problem/requirement, he said that vendoring which his team used was bulky and they will probably solve it with the official tools soon.

Read more:

• Reference of third party package management tools
• Blog post by golang team discussing the approach for implementing vendoring

Vendoring in Go 1.6

Vendoring has been released from experimental in go 1.6 (after this post was initially written) that makes the process of using specific tags / versions of packages using third party tools easier. go get does still not have the functionality to fetch specific tags or versions.

More about how vendoring works: Understanding and using the vendor folder

Modules in Go 1.11

Go 1.11 has released an experimental features called modules to improve dependency management, they hope to release it as stable in Go 1.12: Information about modules in Go 1.11

go mod is available now.

For those who need to build a binary of a specific tag, here is my way:

mkdir temp
cd temp
go mod init local/build  # or `go mod init .` before go 1.13
go get -d -v github.com/nsqio/nsq@v1.1.0
mkdir bin
go build -o bin/nsqd.exe github.com/nsqio/nsq/apps/nsqd

Explanation:

• The above code pulls NSQ v1.1.0 and build nsqd.
• go mod init . creates a go.mod file in the current directory, which enables using go get with revision/tags. (see this link)
• -d means "download only", if you want a direct installation, omit this flag and the build commands below this line.
• -v means "be verbose".
• The above code is for Windows. If you use Linux, replace bin/nsqd.exe with bin/nsqd.

The module downloaded is stored in %GOPATH%\pkg\mod. If you don't want to pollute your GOPATH directory, make a new one and set your GOPATH to it.

This question predates Go Modules, but for future reference the correct procedure in Go 1.11 for fetching a specific version is this:

go get github.com/influxdb@[version]

Or to get a specific git tag:

go get github.com/influxdb@[gitref]

I've had success with this:

• Run the get command without the tag - it should clone the master branch.
• Move to the clone directory and checkout the tag or branch that you want.
• Run the go get command again, it should process the command on the checked out branch.

In order to update the version of a GO api follow the below steps.

For example I want to update following api to a specific tag.

Actual repo : https://github.com/fraugster/parquet-go

Tags : https://github.com/fraugster/parquet-goreleases/tag/v0.5.0

Go to your root directory


go get -u https://github.com/fraugster/parquet-go@v0.5.0
`

I have a (somewhat hackish, but working) approach to address this problem, at least for git repositories: As go get'ed packages are normal source control repositories, one can check out tags using normal git tools (could use git from command line, I am using Atlassian SourceTree).

To share my package configuration with my teammates, I have made a git repository out ouf my GOPATH. I then added all packages (at least the ones I wanted to manage this way) to this repo as git submodule. This requires you to move the exising repo folders out of the way and re-add them as git submodule, to not confuse git. This process is somewhat tedious, but proved to be worth the trouble:

I can now commit and push to my GOPATH-repo every timy I use a new go package. When my teammates pull from this repo and issue a git submodule update (or simply update via SoureTree, which does this automatically), their version of the package gets checked out on the same tag as mine is.

Of course this does only work for packages under git source control...

maven golang plugin allows to play with branch, tag and revision during GET, you can take a look at its test for such cases with GIT repository