I've searched golang-nuts and the Go issue tracker pretty extensively and I
can't find any mention of my question or the topic, so would appreciate any
links if this has been previously covered and I was simply using the wrong
search terms.
go install takes a number of packages as arguments:
$ go install -help
usage: install [build flags] [packages]
Let's assume for the sake of discussion we're talking about:
go install github.com/fruit/banana
(where banana is a main package)
In writing documentation, particularly when it comes to code generators
(but not exclusive to that), I find myself repeatedly asking the user to
"ensure your path is correct..." so that when they now run:
banana -help
it invokes the banana binary we just installed.
This is relatively painful and error prone because of any permutation of
problems/inconsistencies with PATH values, not to mention the potential for
clashes in names of installed Go programs within $GOPATH/bin/
One way to deal with this is to do something like:
$(go list -f {{.Target}} github.com/fruit/banana) arg1 arg2 ...
but:
1. I'm unsure how cross-platform this is
2. it's not particularly pretty/friendly
3. it doesn't work with go:generate directives
4. it doesn't solve the problem of name clashes in $GOPATH/bin
What about therefore making go run (which currently only takes .go files as
arguments to the go command) also understand the case of a single package
argument:
go run github.com/fruit/banana arg1 arg2 ...
Arguments that are then passed on to the command as before (here arg1 arg2
... are passed on to banana)
This would not build/install anything, it would simply exec the program
most recently built via 'go install github.com/fruit/banana', or fail if
not such file exists.
There are of course other details to work through... just looking to test
the water with the thought.
Appreciate any links/feedback etc, particularly if actually others consider
that I'm perceiving an issue where in fact there isn't one (i.e. I needn't
even both writing about getting PATH correct in docs) and that name clashes
are not common.
But it would seem to be a nice way of further lowering the bar for new
starters with the language, work cross-platform and not require any further
environment tweaking.
Thanks,
Paul
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