bingo

bingo

go get like, simple CLI that allows automated versioning of Go package level binaries (e.g required as dev tools by your project!) built on top of Go Modules, allowing reproducible dev environments.

Features

From our experience all repositories and projects require some tools and binaries to be present on the machine to be able to perform various development operations like building, formatting, releasing or static analysis. For smooth development all such tools should be pinned to a certain version and bounded to the code commits there were meant to be used against.

Go modules does not aim to solve this problem, and even if they will do at some point it will not be on the package level, which makes it impossible to e.g pin minor version X.Y.0 of package module1/cmd/abc and version X.Z.0 of module1/cmd/def.

At the end bingo, has following features:

• It allows maintaining separate, hidden, nested Go modules for Go buildable packages you need without obfuscating your own module or worrying with tool’s cross dependencies!
• Package level versioning, which allows versioning different (or the same!) package multiple times from a single module in different versions.
• Works also for non-Go projects. It only requires the tools to be written in Go.
• No need to install bingo in order to use pinned tools. This avoids the “chicken & egg” problem. You only need go build.
• Easy upgrade, downgrade, addition, and removal of the needed binary’s version, with no risk of dependency conflicts.
  • NOTE: Tools are often not following semantic versioning, so bingo allow one to pin by commit ID.
• Immutable binary names. This creates a reliable way for users and CIs to use expected version of the binaries, reinstalling on-demand only if needed.
• Works with all buildable Go projects, including pre Go modules and complex projects with complex directives like replace, retract or exclude statements. (e.g Prometheus)
• Optional, automatic integration with Makefiles.

You can read full a story behind bingo in this blog post.

Requirements

• Go 1.24+
• Linux or MacOS (Want Windows support? Helps us out)
• All tools that you wish to “pin” have to be built in Go (they don’t need to use Go modules at all).

Installing

In your repository (does not need to be a Go project)

go install github.com/bwplotka/bingo@latest

For go version before 1.17 use go get github.com/bwplotka/bingo instead.

Recommended: Ideally you want to pin bingo tool to the single version too (inception!). Do it via:

bingo get -l github.com/bwplotka/bingo

Usage

go get but for binaries!

The key idea is that you can manage your tools similar to your Go dependencies via go get:

bingo get [<package or binary>[@version1 or none,version2,version3...]]

For example:

• bingo get github.com/fatih/faillint
• bingo get github.com/fatih/faillint@latest
• bingo get github.com/fatih/[email protected]
• bingo get github.com/fatih/[email protected],v1.5.0

After this, make sure to commit .bingo directory in git repository, so the tools will stay versioned! Once pinned, anyone can install correct version of the tool with correct dependencies by either doing:

bingo get <tool>

For example bingo get faillint

… or without bingo:

go build -mod=mod -modfile .bingo/<tool>.mod -o=$GOBIN/<tool>-<version>

For example go build -mod=mod -modfile .bingo/faillint.mod -o=$GOBIN/faillint-v1.5.0

bingo allow one to easily maintain a separate, nested Go Module for each binary. By default, it will keep it .bingo/<tool>.mod This allow one to correctly pin the binary without polluting the main go module or other’s tool module.

Using Installed Tools

bingo get builds pinned tool or tools in your $GOBIN path. Binaries have a name following <provided-tool-name>-<version> pattern. So after installation you can do:

• From shell:

${GOBIN}/<tool>-<version> <args>

For example: ${GOBIN}/faillint-v1.5.0

While it’s not the easiest for humans to read or type, it’s essential to ensure your scripts use pinned version instead of some non-deterministic “latest version”.

NOTE: If you use -l option, bingo creates symlink to . Use it with care as it’s easy to have side effects by having another binary with same name e.g on CI.

bingo does not have run command (for a reason), it provides useful helper variables for script or adhoc use:

NOTE: Below helpers makes it super easy to install or use pinned binaries without even installing bingo (it will use just go build!) 💖

• From shell:

source .bingo/variables.env
${<PROVIDED_TOOL_NAME>} <args>

• From Makefile:

include .bingo/Variables.mk
run:
  $(<PROVIDED_TOOL_NAME>) <args>

Real life examples!

Let’s show a few, real, sometimes novel examples showcasing bingo capabilities:

1. golangci-lint is all-in-one lint framework. It’s important to pin it on CI so CI runs are reproducible no matter what new linters are added, removed or changed in new release. Let’s pin it to v1.35.2 and use path recommended by golangci-lint install docs: github.com/golangci/golangci-lint/cmd/golangci-lint (funny enough they discourage go get exactly because of the lack of pinning features bingo have!)

   bingo get github.com/golangci/golangci-lint/cmd/[email protected]
   

   This will pin to that commit and install ${GOBIN}/golangci-lint-v1.35.2

2. It’s very common in Go world to use goimports, popular gofmt replacement which formats Go code including imports. However, not many know that it’s breaking compatibility a lot between versions (there are no releases). If you want to assert certain formatting of the Go code in the CI etc your only option is to pin goimports version. You can do it via bingo get:

   bingo get golang.org/x/tools/cmd/goimports@latest
   

   This will install (at the time of writing) latest binary: ${GOBIN}/goimports-v0.0.0-20210112230658-8b4aab62c064

3. You rather like older formatting? No issue, let’s downgrade. Since goimports was already installed you can reference it by just goimports. Let’s pick the commit we want e.g e64124511800702a4d8d79e04cf6f1af32e7bef2:

   bingo get goimports@e64124511800702a4d8d79e04cf6f1af32e7bef2
   

   This will pin to that commit and install ${GOBIN}/goimports-v0.0.0-20200519204825-e64124511800

4. Installing (and pinning) multiple versions:

   bingo get goimports@e64124511800702a4d8d79e04cf6f1af32e7bef2,v0.0.0-20200601175630-2caf76543d99,af9456bb636557bdc2b14301a9d48500fdecc053
   

   This will pin and install three versions of goimports. Very useful to compatibility testing.

5. Updating to the current latest:

   bingo get goimports@latest
   

   This will find the latest module version, pin and install it.

6. Listing binaries you have pinned:

   bingo list
   

7. Unpinning goimports totally from the project:

   bingo get goimports@none
   

   PS: go get also allows @none suffix! Did you know? I didn’t (:*

8. Installing all tools:

   bingo get
   

9. Bonus: Have you ever dreamed to pin command from bigger project like… thanos? I was. Can you even install it using Go tooling? Let’s try:

   go get github.com/thanos-io/thanos/cmd/[email protected]
   # Output: go: cannot use path@version syntax in GOPATH mode
   

   Ups you cannot use this in non-Go project at all… (: Let’s create setup go mod and retry:

   go mod init _
   # Output: go: creating new go.mod: module 
   go get github.com/thanos-io/thanos/cmd/[email protected]
   # go get github.com/thanos-io/thanos/cmd/[email protected]
   # go: downloading github.com/thanos-io/thanos v0.17.2
   # go: found github.com/thanos-io/thanos/cmd/thanos in github.com/thanos-io/thanos v0.17.2
   # go get: github.com/thanos-io/[email protected] requires
   # github.com/cortexproject/[email protected] requires
   # github.com/thanos-io/[email protected] requires
   # github.com/cortexproject/[email protected] requires
   # github.com/thanos-io/[email protected] requires
   # github.com/cortexproject/[email protected] requires
   # github.com/thanos-io/[email protected] requires
   # github.com/cortexproject/[email protected] requires
   # github.com/thanos-io/[email protected] requires
   # github.com/cortexproject/[email protected] requires
   # github.com/prometheus/[email protected] requires
   # github.com/prometheus/[email protected] requires
   # k8s.io/[email protected]+incompatible: reading https://proxy.golang.org/k8s.io/client-go/@v/v12.0.0+incompatible.mod: 410 Gone
   # server response: not found: k8s.io/[email protected]+incompatible: invalid version: +incompatible suffix not allowed: module contains a go.mod file, so semantic import versioning is required
   

   The reasoning is complex but TL;DR: Go Modules are just sometimes hard to be properly used for some projects. This is why bigger projects like Kubernetes, Prometheus or Thanos has to use replace statements (plus others like exclude or retract). To make this go get work we would need to manually craft replace statements in our own go mod file. But what if we don’t want to do that or don’t know how or simply we want to install pinned version of Thanos locally without having Go project? Just use bingo:

   bingo get github.com/thanos-io/thanos/cmd/[email protected]
   ${GOBIN}/thanos-v0.17.2 --help
   

Advanced Techniques

• Using advanced go build flags and environment variables.

To tell bingo to use certain env vars and tags during build time, just add them as a comment to the go.mod file manually and do bingo get. Done!

NOTE: Order of comment matters. First bingo expects relative package name (optional), then environment variables, then flags. All space delimited.

Real example from production project that relies on extended Hugo.

module _ // Auto generated by https://github.com/bwplotka/bingo. DO NOT EDIT

go 1.16

require github.com/gohugoio/hugo v0.83.1 // CGO_ENABLED=1 -tags=extended

Run bingo list to see if build options are parsed correctly. Run bingo get to install all binaries including the modified one with new build flags.

Production Usage

To see production example see:

• bingo’s own tools
• Thanos’s tools
• go-grpc-middleware’s tools

Contributing

Any contributions are welcome! Just use GitHub Issues and Pull Requests as usual. We follow Thanos Go coding style guide.

See an extensive and up-to-date description of the bingo usage below:

Command Help

bingo: 'go get' like, simple CLI that allows automated versioning of 
Go package level binaries (e.g required as dev tools by your project!) 

built on top of Go Modules, allowing reproducible dev environments. 
'bingo' allow one to easily maintain a separate, nested Go Module for each binary.

For detailed examples and documentation see: https://github.com/bwplotka/bingo

Usage:
  bingo [command]

Commands:
  completion  Generate the autocompletion script for the specified shell
  get         add development tools to the current project (e.g: bingo get github.com/fatih/faillint@latest)
  list        List enumerates all or one binary that are/is currently pinned in this project. 
  version     Prints bingo Version.

Options:
  -h, --help            help for bingo
  -m, --moddir string   Directory where separate modules for each binary will be maintained. 
                        Feel free to commit this directory to your VCS to bond binary versions to your project code. 
                        If the directory does not exist bingo logs and assumes a fresh project. (default ".bingo")
  -v, --verbose         Print more

Use "bingo [command] --help" for more information about a command.

Initial Author

@bwplotka inspired by Paul’s research and with a bit of help from Duco (: