`go install .` installs the current module from local source, not the registry

2026-03-17 (6m ago)2 views

#go#cli

I always reach for go build when I want to try out a Go CLI I'm hacking on locally, and then move the binary somewhere on my PATH by hand. Turns out there's a simpler way.

When you're inside a Go module directory, you can run:

go install .

This compiles the package in the current directory and drops the binary straight into $GOPATH/bin (usually ~/go/bin). If that directory is on your PATH, the command is immediately available system-wide — no manual mv or cp needed.

The key thing I didn't fully appreciate before: go install <path> has two modes. When you pass a module path with a version tag (like go install github.com/foo/bar@latest), it fetches from the module proxy. But when you pass a relative or local path (., ./cmd/foo, etc.), it uses exactly the source on disk — your local changes, your current branch, everything. No tag required.

So the workflow when developing a CLI locally is:

# make a change
go install .
# the updated binary is already in ~/go/bin, ready to use

Compared to make build && ./aku, this skips the ./ prefix entirely and puts it on PATH. The only caveat: if the module sets ldflags for version/commit injection (via a Makefile), go install . won't include those — you'd need go install -ldflags "..." or just use make build when you care about the embedded build metadata.