I'm using go 1.11 with module support. I understand that the go tool now installs dependencies automatically on build/install. I also understand the reasoning.
I'm using docker to build my binaries. In many other ecosystems its common to copy over your dependency manifest (package.json, requirements.txt, etc) and install dependencies as a separate stage from build. This takes advantage of docker's layer caching, and makes rebuilds much faster since generally code changes vastly outnumber dependency changes.
I was wondering if vgo has any way to do this?
It was an issue #26610, which is fixed now.
So now you can just use:
go mod download
For this to work you need just the go.mod / go.sum files.
For example, here's how to have a cached multistage Docker build: (source)
FROM golang:1.17-alpine as builder
RUN apk --no-cache add ca-certificates git
WORKDIR /build
# Fetch dependencies
COPY go.mod go.sum ./
RUN go mod download
# Build
COPY . ./
RUN CGO_ENABLED=0 go build
# Create final image
FROM alpine
WORKDIR /
COPY --from=builder /build/myapp .
EXPOSE 8080
CMD ["./myapp"]
Also see the article Containerize Your Go Developer Environment – Part 2, which describes how to leverage the Go compiler cache to speed up builds even further.