Anatomy of `go.mod` file

Posted on 20 Aug, 2021

Consider a hypothetical go.mod file

module hello

go 1.13

require (
    golang.org/x/demo v0.3.0 // indirect
    rsc.io/quote v1.5.2
    golang.org/x/text version v0.0.0-20170915032832-14c0d48ead0c
)

The golang.org/x/text version v0.0.0-20170915032832-14c0d48ead0c is an example of a pseudo-version, which is the go command’s version syntax for a specific untagged commit. The format looks like this,

vX.Y.Z-yyyymmddhhmmss-abcdefxyz

Most recent tagged version + Commit time UTC + Commit prefix (12 chars)

The indirect comment indicates a dependency is not used directly by this module, only indirectly by other module dependencies (transitive dependency).