go workspaces usage in kubernetes project

kubernetes

Kubernetes (k/k) recently started using Go Workspaces to manage its multi-module setup more effectively.

The goal is to helps keep things consistent across the many staging repositories and the main k/k project.

At the root of the k/k repo, you’ll find go.work and go.work.sum.

These files are auto-generated by the hack/update-vendor.sh script.

Specifically, the logic lives around lines 198–219 and 293–303.

At a high level, the script runs the following commands from the root of the repo:

go work init
go work edit -go 1.24.0 -godebug default=go1.24
go work edit -use .

git ls-files -z ':(glob)./staging/src/k8s.io/*/go.mod' \
  | xargs -0 -n1 dirname -z \
  | xargs -0 -n1 go work edit -use

go mod download
go work vendor

This creates:

• go.work file that includes the root module (.) and all the Kubernetes staging modules under staging/src/k8s.io.

go 1.24.0

godebug default=go1.24

use (
    .
    ./staging/src/k8s.io/api
    ./staging/src/k8s.io/apiextensions-apiserver
    ./staging/src/k8s.io/apimachinery
    ...
    ./staging/src/k8s.io/sample-controller
)

• go.work.sum file that tracks checksums for the workspace modules — like go.sum, but at the workspace level.

• and the vendor/ directory which is populated via go work vendor and collects all dependencies from the workspace modules.