I'm trying to understand how to work with a remote repository in Artifactory for a Go project. My initial expectation was that it'll work transparently, all I would need to do is to point GORPOXY variable to a virtual repository (with local and remote behind it), do go build and dependencies will either be downloaded from the Artifactory cache or Artifactory would download them transparently. Similar to the way it works for maven dependencies.
When I tried that, it complained that the dependencies weren't found in artifactory. Ok.
Reading the documentation two things stand out. First, there's nothing there about GOPROXY and everything is about using artifactory cli. That's a big downside for several reasons.
Second, is that you need to publish dependencies manually with jfrog rt go-publish go --self=false --deps=ALL and then dependencies appear under a local repository.
So I'm trying to figure out if 1) I can avoid using JFrog CLI and 2) what's the point of remote repositories if they don't proxy? Or maybe I'm missing something?
Artifactory 6.3.0
I understand your confusion on the blog post you mentioned, though I have a feeling the intent of the writer was to more show how the JFrog CLI can be used.
To answer your questions:
1) Yes, you don't have to use the JFrog CLI to build. Please check out the documentation on how to set up a remote repository for Go. This will guide you through setting up GitHub or GoCenter as a remote repository for your Go builds. This will allow you to set the GOPROXY environment variable following this structure <protocol>://<username>:<password>@<artifactory domain>/api/go/<go repository>.
2) Remote repositories will absolutely act as a proxy, caching the contents you download from the remote repository (copying a part from the user guide: A remote Go repository in Artifactory serves as a caching proxy for a public Go registry such as GoCenter or GitHub.)