4-packages

Packages and Imports

A package is a focused area of functionality

In a Go program, each directory is associated with a unique package.

• importing a package gives access to everything in the package
• import "fmt" or

import (
    "fmt",
    str "strings"
)

• the functions inside the package can be referenced with the name of the package and the name of the item, e.g. fmt.Println
• the module name can be aliased

Create a Package

• a package is a folder
• functions with the first character uppercase are public
• If you want to make something package visible, only make the first character in the name of the item lowercase
• relative imports are bad practice

Third Party Packages

• dep is used to manage the vendor directory
• dep init and dep ensure are useful commands for dependency management
• Vigo is a new project for dependencies management
• a package can be distributed with any public code repository