The Go Blog

Next steps for pkg.go.dev

Julie Qiu
31 January 2020

Introduction

In 2019, we launched go.dev, a new hub for Go developers.

As part of the site, we also launched pkg.go.dev, a central source of information about Go packages and modules. Like godoc.org, pkg.go.dev serves Go documentation. However, it also understands modules and has information about past versions of a package!

Throughout this year, we will be adding features to pkg.go.dev to help our users better understand their dependencies and help them make better decisions around what libraries to import.

Redirecting godoc.org requests to pkg.go.dev

To minimize confusion about which site to use, later this year we are planning to redirect traffic from godoc.org to the corresponding page on pkg.go.dev. We need your help to ensure that pkg.go.dev addresses all of our users' needs. We encourage everyone to begin using pkg.go.dev today for all of their needs and provide feedback.

Your feedback will inform our transition plan, with the goal of making pkg.go.dev our primary source of information and documentation for packages and modules. We’re sure there are things that you want to see on pkg.go.dev, and we want to hear from you about what those features are!

You can share your feedback with us on these channels:

• Post on the Go issue tracker.
• Email go-discovery-feedback@google.com.
• Click “Share Feedback” or “Report an Issue” in the go.dev footer.

As part of this transition, we will also be discussing plans for API access to pkg.go.dev. We will be posting updates on Go issue 33654.

Frequently asked questions

Since our launch in November, we’ve received tons of great feedback about pkg.go.dev from Go users. For the remainder of this post, we thought it would be helpful to answer some frequently asked questions.

My package doesn’t show up on pkg.go.dev! How do I add it?

We monitor the Go Module Index regularly for new packages to add to pkg.go.dev. If you don’t see a package on pkg.go.dev, you can add it by fetching the module version from proxy.golang.org. See go.dev/about for instructions.

My package has license restrictions. What’s wrong with it?

We understand it can be a frustrating experience to not be able to see the package you want in its entirety on pkg.go.dev. We appreciate your patience as we improve our license detection algorithm.

Since our launch in November, we’ve made the following improvements:

• Updated our license policy to include the list of licenses that we detect and recognize
• Worked with the licensecheck team to improve detection for copyright notices
• Established a manual review process for special cases

As always, our license policy is at pkg.go.dev/license-policy. If you are having issues, feel free to file an issue on the Go issue tracker, or email go-discovery-feedback@google.com so that we can work with you directly!

Will pkg.go.dev be open-sourced so I can run it at work for my private code?

We understand that corporations with private code want to run a documentation server that provides module support. We want to help meet that need, but we feel we don’t yet understand it as well as we need to.

We’ve heard from users that running the godoc.org server is more complex than it should be, because it is designed for serving at public internet scale instead of just within a company. We believe the current pkg.go.dev server would have the same problem.

We think a new server is more likely to be the right answer for use with private code, instead of exposing every company to the complexity of running the internet-scale pkg.go.dev codebase. In addition to serving documentation, a new server could also serve information to goimports and gopls.

If you want to run such a server, please fill out this 3-5 minute survey to help us better understand your needs. This survey will be available until March 1st, 2020.

We’re excited about the future of pkg.go.dev in 2020, and we hope you are too! We look forward to hearing your feedback and working with the Go community on this transition.