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Comments (54)

• MadVikingGod
  Here's the primer for those who thing find a replace is the answer. Pretend you have a project with A 1.2.3 depends on B 2.4.6 which depends on C 0.1.1. If you are in github you get module github.com/example/A requires ( github.com/example/B 2.4.6 github.com/example/C 0.1.1 )You now have many choices on how to proceed, but none of them will include A) being able to build old releases, or B) doing so without making changes to all dependencies.One choice is go to the leaves, C in our example, and make a release on gitlab. Then go to B, and have B depend on the gitlab C. This is fine for rolling forward, but if you want to roll back you would have to rewrite all of C to use the gitlab url, and find all of the equivalent tags and repush all of them. Also tell your users that any binaries you've released now have new hashes. Then repeat this for every repo. It's not a small task.
• p4bl0
  True, but beware of the domain name you're using. Because VeriSign may unilaterally decide to delete your domain name along with thousands of others [1] and you're back to square one…[1] https://neil.fraser.name/news/2026/09/03/
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  thih9
  > In my opinion, every commerical software development team using Go should be using custom domains for namespacing their internal libraries and packages.I’d remove “go” from the above, i.e. I think same applies to other stacks.Even using GitHub domain links in code comments gets problematic long term. Ie when a migration happens and those links start pointing nowhere.
• st3fan
  Great when a company goes out of business and the domains are dangling. Next one to scoop it up takes over source code that others new depend on. We've seen this many times already in other ecosystems. It is a very bad situation.It is bad advice to move your packages under your own domain. You will never be as good as Microsoft to keep paying for the domain. There are no guarantees in life but I do guarantee you that when you go out of business, that domain is the last thing you will think about.
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  dewey
  > That is, if you move your git hosting to GitLab then you have to change your code!You can also just use "replace github.com/example/example => gitlab.com/example/example" in your go.mod file and everything will keep working. That seems like a very pre-mature optimization for something that doesn't really matter.
• 0xCMP
  This is great and I think for any company/individual who is going to ensure their domain is registered and maintained this makes a lot of sense. It would be catastrophic, but there is no reason Github couldn't disappear or otherwise change some policies that require moving away from it. The way Go works makes committing these package names tied to Github so much more weighty than simply the place you pull from.The one thing that I was worried about was returning 301 in the example Nginx config. If you ever wanted to change the url that clients are redirected to then any browsers that visited the old url config would be forced to go to the old config's redirect url. For `go ...` and `curl` it wouldn't matter, but Chrome/Firefox will cache that 301 permanently and break the intended redirect. Not sure if this is really an issue in practice though.
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  SenHeng
  GitHub is almost forever. Your custom domain disappears when you stop paying the bills, which if you’re an open source developer has a higher likelihood than GitHub disappearing.One day, we’re all going back to vendoring dependencies.
• gumby
  Seems like an error to use a URL. This is perfect for a URN or some other form of URI.It could be a URN that used the DNS as a back end (though that’s a lot like a URL) so better would be something more abstract with multiple possible resolvers and a signature.
• unscaled
  > One of the good features of Go is that you namespace your code with the location to fetch the code.Then the rest of the article explains why this is NOT a good feature in practice.I don't think it's unworkable either, but this is one of these little thing that Go decided to do different and convinced its fans that this is a great idea and all the other languages where doing it wrong. After a couple of road bumps appeared, instead of admitting there are some advantages to having official package names, we're now told that everybody should just set up their own custom domain with an nginx server or a Go Vanity URLs forwarder to serve traffic for their GitHub-hosted packages.
• serbuvlad
  > That is, if you move your git hosting to GitLab then you have to change your code!Not to be cynical about this but I fail to see how running sed s///g after a very rare event qualifies as a serious problem.Now, sure, given that the solution is so simple, it's a nice recommendation, but still...
• prasadvara
  Isn't this going to introduce the dependency of domain management? I understand the positive side of it, but put some infra level manamgment layer to individual Open Source devs, just a thought. But yeah, positives vs negatives weigh and pick.
• gchamonlive
  Thanks for answering my question! So yes, if I intend to use go and study the packages I'd have to rely on beforehand, if they're all hosted on GitHub should make me steer away from Golang. Or at least plan to cache the packages I need locally so CI always have something to work with when building.Alternatively, could we ourselves build an automatic mirror so there's a redundant supply provider that doesn't depend on a maintainer's choice of git forgehttps://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49434625
• andreashaerter
  There are also a few Hugo templates for vanity import paths.Here's mine: https://github.com/foundata/hugo-theme-govanity (e.g. used at https://golang.foundata.com/ )And yes I'm aware of the irony of hosting this on GitHub... still figuring out a good workflow for maintaining our OSS on Codeberg and GitHub in parallel fed from the internal forge. The dependency on our own domain is real but we favor it.
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  mosselman
  I have not worked with Go, so I thought I'd ask: why wouldn't simple find and replace be able to fix this? And why wouldn't a coding agent be able to do this for you quickly?
• nizarmah
  That's a beautiful solution. I love it! The alternative work went with was to just build everything ourselves.
• cyberax
  I'm not sure that custom domains are a good idea. It's way too easy to end up with broken links once vanity domains go away.However, Golang saves the hashes of all the modules in `go.sum` files, so we just need to add a way to do content-addressable fetches. This solves the issue of reproducibility for old builds. As long as you can find the module in some repository somewhere, you'll be able to build it.The next step is supporting module _evolution_. We need a way to declare: "From this point onward, `github.com/company/someproject` is now `company.com/someproject`", so that all the references are to these packages are identical. This is possible on a per-package basis with `replace` directives, but this doesn't scale.And this is not easy to solve in general (especially in the age of supply-chain attacks). If the initial project cooperates (or if Github can be convinced to help), perhaps at least a part of this can be solved by adding special "redirecting module" support to Go.
• Meneth
  You shouldn't be using fully qualified domains at all. Use relative paths instead, like sibling-hosted git submodules.
• anon
  undefined
• bionsystem
  braid has been a treat for us to manage external dependencies. Much cleaner than submodules.
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  0xbadcafebee
  Even better reason: you can later point this domain at an artifact registry. This not only gives you reliability and flexibility, it also secures your software supply chain. You don't need an SBOM or anything fancy to get started, just pull all your artifacts into a central source and improve it over time. Install an artifact registry anywhere you can run a container, use dumb static shared credentials, and start with "proxy mode". Later on you can pin or restrict versions, verify checksums, implement SSO, etc. This is going to become table stakes in the new security landscape.
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  skybrian
  Not really convinced. I'd rather it stayed on Github so it doesn't disappear. Particular for businesses whose priorities might change.
• bigwhite
  [flagged]
• ambicapter
  [dead]