You can check in your dependencies into vendors/, in case they are so complex. However it's recommended to only have few dependencies. Yes, you need to install

You can check in your dependencies into vendors/, in case they are so complex. However it's recommended to only have few dependencies. Yes, you need to install your deps separately. (If the maintainer decides not to use vendors/ and not check it into git) With C, the classic ./configure && make && make install also expects you to install your dependencies manually. Using Go you have a canonical way to do it. Also if you don't plan to hack on it, it's probably a got idea to go with binary packages. If there are none, the tool is probably not exactly meant for production anyway.