Removing packages installed with go get

A go package can be removed as follows.

go get package@none

Here @none is the version part set as none. Thus removing the package.


You can use go mod tidy to clean unused packages


It's safe to just delete the source directory and compiled package file. Find the source directory under $GOPATH/src and the package file under $GOPATH/pkg/<architecture>, for example: $GOPATH/pkg/windows_amd64.


You can delete the archive files and executable binaries that go install (or go get) produces for a package with go clean -i importpath.... These normally reside under $GOPATH/pkg and $GOPATH/bin, respectively.

Be sure to include ... on the importpath, since it appears that, if a package includes an executable, go clean -i will only remove that and not archive files for subpackages, like gore/gocode in the example below.

Source code then needs to be removed manually from $GOPATH/src.

go clean has an -n flag for a dry run that prints what will be run without executing it, so you can be certain (see go help clean). It also has a tempting -r flag to recursively clean dependencies, which you probably don't want to actually use since you'll see from a dry run that it will delete lots of standard library archive files!

A complete example, which you could base a script on if you like:

$ go get -u github.com/motemen/gore

$ which gore
/Users/ches/src/go/bin/gore

$ go clean -i -n github.com/motemen/gore...
cd /Users/ches/src/go/src/github.com/motemen/gore
rm -f gore gore.exe gore.test gore.test.exe commands commands.exe commands_test commands_test.exe complete complete.exe complete_test complete_test.exe debug debug.exe helpers_test helpers_test.exe liner liner.exe log log.exe main main.exe node node.exe node_test node_test.exe quickfix quickfix.exe session_test session_test.exe terminal_unix terminal_unix.exe terminal_windows terminal_windows.exe utils utils.exe
rm -f /Users/ches/src/go/bin/gore
cd /Users/ches/src/go/src/github.com/motemen/gore/gocode
rm -f gocode.test gocode.test.exe
rm -f /Users/ches/src/go/pkg/darwin_amd64/github.com/motemen/gore/gocode.a

$ go clean -i github.com/motemen/gore...

$ which gore

$ tree $GOPATH/pkg/darwin_amd64/github.com/motemen/gore
/Users/ches/src/go/pkg/darwin_amd64/github.com/motemen/gore

0 directories, 0 files

# If that empty directory really bugs you...
$ rmdir $GOPATH/pkg/darwin_amd64/github.com/motemen/gore

$ rm -rf $GOPATH/src/github.com/motemen/gore

Note that this information is based on the go tool in Go version 1.5.1.

Tags:

Go

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