How do I import a specific version of a package using go get?

coming from a Node environment I used to install a specific version of a vendor lib into the project folder (node_modules) by telling npm to install that version of that lib from the package.json or even directly from the console, like so:

$ npm install [email protected]

Then I used to import that version of that package in my project just with:

var express = require('express');

Now, I want to do the same thing with go. How can I do that? Is it possible to install a specific version of a package? If so, using a centralized $GOPATH, how can I import one version instead of another?

I would do something like this:

$ go get github.com/wilk/[email protected]
$ go get github.com/wilk/[email protected]

But then, how can I make a difference during the import?

Go 1.11 will have a feature called go modules and you can simply add a dependency with a version. Follow these steps:

go mod init .
go mod edit -require github.com/wilk/[email protected]
go get -v -t ./...   
go build
go install 

Here's more info on that topic - https://github.com/golang/go/wiki/Modules

Really surprised nobody has mentioned gopkg.in.

gopkg.in is a service that provides a wrapper (redirect) that lets you express versions as repo urls, without actually creating repos. E.g. gopkg.in/yaml.v1 vs gopkg.in/yaml.v2, even though they both live at https://github.com/go-yaml/yaml

• gopkg.in/yaml.v1 redirects to https://github.com/go-yaml/yaml/tree/v1
• gopkg.in/yaml.v2 redirects to https://github.com/go-yaml/yaml/tree/v2

This isn't perfect if the author is not following proper versioning practices (by incrementing the version number when breaking backwards compatibility), but it does work with branches and tags.