Set up vanity go get aliases

This guide was made from examples provided by the Kubernetes project, check it out here!

A little-known fact of Go, is that you can use meta tags to redirect go get requests. This allows for custom alias domains when using public git providers (eg. GitHub, GitLab) which consequently makes it easier to maintain a stable identity for your package and ease the process of moving your repositories in future, as well as hosting repository mirrors.

When go get makes a request, it appends the go-get=1 query parameter to the URL you specify, so go get abc.xyz/example will make a request to http(s)://abc.xyz/example?go-get=1. This page can specify meta tags that locate the repository to be retrieved.

An example response is as follows:

The go-import tag is used to locate the repository for go get. We specify the go-source information for godoc support. More information on go-source is available here

If running on Kubernetes, here’s a ready-made manifest for you to get started with!