Local Development of Go Packages: Fork, Modify, and Replace

To locally develop a Go package, follow these steps:

1. Fork and Clone the Repository

Fork the repository you want to modify and clone it to your preferred directory. You can clone the repository to any directory, but for Go development, it's common to use the Go workspace.

To set up the workspace, navigate to your home directory and create the following folder structure:

cd ~
mkdir -p go/src/github.com/_admondtamang
cd go/src/github.com/_admondtamang
git clone https://github.com/admondtamang/[package_name]

2. Modify the go.mod File

For local development, you don’t need to use a tag. Generate the replace directive in your go.mod file using the following command:

go mod edit -replace="github.com/mmcdole/gofeed@v1.2.1=/Users/admondtamang/go/src/github.com/_admondtamang/gofeed"

Alternatively, you can manually edit the go.mod file to include the replace directive. The final go.mod should look like this:

module oneaccord.cc/test

go 1.23.0

require github.com/mmcdole/gofeed v1.2.1

require (
  github.com/PuerkitoBio/goquery v1.8.0 // indirect
  github.com/andybalholm/cascadia v1.3.1 // indirect
  github.com/json-iterator/go v1.1.12 // indirect
  github.com/mmcdole/goxpp v1.1.1-0.20240225020742-a0c311522b23 // indirect
  github.com/modern-go/concurrent v0.0.0-20180306012644-bacd9c7ef1dd // indirect
  github.com/modern-go/reflect2 v1.0.2 // indirect
  golang.org/x/net v0.4.0 // indirect
  golang.org/x/text v0.5.0 // indirect
)

replace github.com/mmcdole/gofeed v1.2.1 => /Users/admondtamang/go/src/github.com/_admondtamang/gofeed

That's all for locally development you can modify your changes and it will reflect in your codebase. To get most out of it push changes to Github repo.

Publish it to Github

3. Push Changes to GitHub with a Tag

Once you've made your changes, push them to your forked repository. Create and push a tag:

git tag "v0.0.1"
git push --tags

4. Update the go.mod File to Use Your Fork

Replace the dependency in your go.mod file with the new version from your fork:

go mod edit -replace="github.com/mmcdole/gofeed@v1.2.1=github.com/admondtamang/gofeed@v0.0.1"

5. Run go mod tidy

Finally, run:

go mod tidy

This will clean up your go.mod file and ensure all dependencies are properly managed.