HACKER Q&A
📣 linkdd

What will happen to the Go ecosystem if one day GitHub closes


Seeing all those `import "github.com/repo/lib"` worries me.

There is no central registry in Go (like PyPi, or NPM, or Crates.io), and it seems there is no will to add one.

Are we expected to mirror github on our infrastructure to become resilient in case of a major outage?

How can a language be so popular with such bad design choices?

After reading this article: https://medium.com/@rwxrob/gophers-we-dont-need-no-stinking-package-registry-cb8f9051e6f0

I sense a bit of hypocrisy:

> What if the thing goes down or becomes unworkably slow (as NPM has done on countless occasions)?

What if I remove my git repository? What if Github goes out of service?

  👤 papaf Accepted Answer ✓
Are we expected to mirror github on our infrastructure to become resilient in case of a major outage?

You can vendor the dependencies you use [1].

[1] https://golang.org/ref/mod#go-mod-vendor

Its also worth noting that, since crates.io uses github for both authentication and hosting the index, the Rust ecosystem would also be effected if github goes down.