The 'go get' sub-command is the only part of Go that interprets the import path as the location of a version control system repository. The use of the 'go get'

The 'go get' sub-command is the only part of Go that interprets the import path as the location of a version control system repository. The use of the 'go get' sub-command is optional. You can use version control commands directly to get code from your own repository mirror or to get specific versions from a repository. As long as you clone the repository to the directory in the workspace corresponding to the import path, all of the other go tools will work with the code.