cmd/go: module shows as "indirect" in go.mod after being fetched with go get as a direct dependency

[shina1024]

What version of Go are you using (go version)?

$ go version
go version go1.20.6 windows/amd64

Does this issue reproduce with the latest release?

YES

What operating system and processor architecture are you using (go env)?

go env Output

$ go env
set GO111MODULE=
set GOARCH=amd64
set GOBIN=
set GOCACHE=C:\Users\UserName\AppData\Local\go-build
set GOENV=C:\Users\UserName\AppData\Roaming\go\env
set GOEXE=.exe
set GOEXPERIMENT=
set GOFLAGS=
set GOHOSTARCH=amd64
set GOHOSTOS=windows
set GOINSECURE=
set GOMODCACHE=C:\Users\UserName\go\pkg\mod
set GONOPROXY=
set GONOSUMDB=
set GOOS=windows
set GOPATH=C:\Users\UserName\go
set GOPRIVATE=
set GOPROXY=https://proxy.golang.org,direct
set GOROOT=C:\Program Files\Go
set GOSUMDB=sum.golang.org
set GOTMPDIR=
set GOTOOLDIR=C:\Program Files\Go\pkg\tool\windows_amd64
set GOVCS=
set GOVERSION=go1.20.6
set GCCGO=gccgo
set GOAMD64=v1
set AR=ar
set CC=gcc
set CXX=g++
set CGO_ENABLED=1
set GOMOD=NUL
set GOWORK=
set CGO_CFLAGS=-O2 -g
set CGO_CPPFLAGS=
set CGO_CXXFLAGS=-O2 -g
set CGO_FFLAGS=-O2 -g
set CGO_LDFLAGS=-O2 -g
set PKG_CONFIG=pkg-config
set GOGCCFLAGS=-m64 -mthreads -Wl,--no-gc-sections -fmessage-length=0 -fdebug-prefix-map=C:\Users\UserName\AppData\Local\Temp\go-build144073124=/tmp/go-build -gno-record-gcc-switches
PS C:\Users\UserName>

What did you do?

1. I added "github.com/inancgumus/screen" to my imports in the Go source code.
2. I ran the command go get github.com/inancgumus/screen.

What did you expect to see?

I expected that "github.com/inancgumus/screen" would appear as a direct dependency in the go.mod file.

What did you see instead?

After running the go get command, the following line appeared in the go.mod file:
require github.com/inancgumus/screen v0.0.0-20190314163918-06e984b86ed3 // indirect

However, after running go mod tidy, the "indirect" marking was removed.

Could you please advise if this is the expected behavior? If this is actually expected and is not a bug, I apologize for any misunderstanding. Thank you for your assistance.

[heschi]

cc @bcmills @matloob

[bcmills]

Could you please advise if this is the expected behavior?

Yes, this is expected. When you run go get github.com/inancgumus/screen, it loads only the package you requested and the packages it transitively imports. That command doesn't have enough information to know whether you actually added an import of that package.

If you would like the new packages to be marked direct from the start, you can use go get -t ./... instead of go get github.com/inancgumus/screen. That will add any packages needed for go test ./... to succeed, and — because those dependencies are found by scanning the imports of ./... in your module — it will mark them as direct.

[shina1024]

Thanks @bcmills! I appreciate your explanation.