It's not uncommon in Go programs to have makefiles (or shell scripts) that make some transformation to the code. This imposes no burden to the user since the ge

It's not uncommon in Go programs to have makefiles (or shell scripts) that make some transformation to the code. This imposes no burden to the user since the generated files are checked into the repository, but it does put some burden on the developer (who has to run make), or to the prospective contributor, who not only has to have make, but potentially has to have all other tools invoked by make or learn the varying non-standard mechanism by which code is generated (e.g for the Go project itself, a new developer has to learn how to use the various shell and perl scripts that generate the code in the syscall package). Go generate does not eliminate this burder for the developer. Someone still has to write the yacc invocation and remember to run it; it won't know how to run itself, but it has the advantage that now there is a standard canonical way to generate code. Anyone can just type go generate instead of learning about makefiles or shell scripts or whatever the project is using. Code generation is normalized under the go generate umbrella.