Checkout and Workspace Location

Older Go projects without module support need a specific workspace layout: the source code of your repository and its dependencies must be in the directories

src/[repository-provider]/[repository-owner]/[repository-name]

in the $GOPATH. Using the .gitpod.yml file, you can bring about such a workspace layout. Here is how we do that for the example go-gin-app repository:

...
checkoutLocation: "go/src/github.com/demo-apps/go-gin-app"
workspaceLocation: "."
tasks:
  - command: |
      cd /workspace/go/src/github.com/demo-apps/go-gin-app
      go get -v ./...
      go build -o app
      ./app

In more detail:

• By default, Gitpod clones the repository into the directory /workspace, which becomes the root directory for the workspace. With checkoutLocation and workspaceLocation you can change this behavior (the paths are taken relative to /workspace).
• Gitpod preconfigures the $GOPATH environment variable to include the directory /workspace/go.
• With go get -v ./... we retrieve the sources of the dependencies from GitHub.
• To build the app, we run go build -o app.
• Lastly, we start the application.