[go] How does Go update third-party packages?

Looking how actively golang packages grow and improve I wonder how the problem with package versions is solved?

I see that one way is to store third-party packages under a project folder.

But what if I install it with go get?

To specify versions, or commits:

go get -u [email protected]

go get -u otherpackage@git-sha

See https://github.com/golang/go/wiki/Modules#daily-workflow

The above answeres have the following problems:

1. They update everything including your app (in case you have uncommitted changes).
2. They updated packages you may have already removed from your project but are already on your disk.

To avoid these, do the following:

1. Delete the 3rd party folders that you want to update.
2. go to your app folder and run go get -d

go 1.13

(exec from module root directory)

Update specified dependencies:

go get -u <package-name>

Update all direct and indirect dependencies to latest minor or patch upgrades (pre-releases are ignored):

go get -u ./...
# or
go get -u=patch ./...

Reference:

https://github.com/golang/go/wiki/Modules#daily-workflow

go help get

@tux answer is great, just wanted to add that you can use go get to update a specific package:

go get -u full_package_name

Since the question mentioned third-party libraries and not all packages then you probably want to fall back to using wildcards.

A use case being: I just want to update all my packages that are obtained from the Github VCS, then you would just say:

go get -u github.com/... // ('...' being the wildcard). 

This would go ahead and only update your github packages in the current $GOPATH

Same applies for within a VCS too, say you want to only upgrade all the packages from ogranizaiton A's repo's since as they have released a hotfix you depend on:

go get -u github.com/orgA/...

Go to path and type

go get -u ./..

It will update all require packages.