Remote Packages

Let's learn how to use an open-source package that's available online.

A note on how you should publish modules

Be aware that using the "replace" keyword like we did in the last assignment isn't advised, but can be useful to get up and running quickly. The proper way to create and depend on modules is to publish them to a remote repository. When you do that, the "replace keyword can be dropped from the go.mod:

Bad

This works for local-only development

module github.com/wagslane/hellogo

go 1.20

replace github.com/wagslane/mystrings v0.0.0 => ../mystrings

require (
	github.com/wagslane/mystrings v0.0.0
)

Good

This works if we publish our modules to a remote location like Github as we should.

module github.com/wagslane/hellogo

go 1.20

require (
	github.com/wagslane/mystrings v0.0.0
)

Assignment

First, create a new directory in the same parent directory as hellogo and mystrings called datetest.

Create main.go in datetest and add the following code:

package main

import (
	"fmt"
	"time"

	tinytime "github.com/wagslane/go-tinytime"
)

func main() {
	tt := tinytime.New(1585750374)

	tt = tt.Add(time.Hour * 48)
	fmt.Println(tt)
}

Initialize a module:

go mod init {REMOTE}/{USERNAME}/datetest

Download and install the remote go-tinydate package using go get:

go get github.com/wagslane/go-tinytime

Print the contents of your go.mod file to see the changes:

cat go.mod

Compile and run your program:

go build
./datetest