fixes required for gitlab golang host url changes and nested subgroups

Working with GitLab subgroups and Golang is particularly difficult. When working with project dependencies that have nested sub-groups in GitLab our Golang dependency resolution becomes even trickier to handle.

Example:

• Original host: gitlab.my.organization.com/my-group/project - a private GitLab host
• New host: gitlab.com/my-organization/my-group/project - An organization on GitLab's own site.
  • Note: that our project path has changed. We now have my-organization/my-group/project rather than my-group/project.

Changes to the Golang files:

• All host URL changes need to be made for every import need to be modified.
  • I have a note about this, using a complex sed replace will work!
• Updating the go.mod and go.sum

# go.mod

# Old
module gitlab.my.organization.com/my-group/project

# New
module gitlab.com/my-organization/my-group/project

# Requirements old
require (

    gitlab.my.organization.com/my-group/project-2 v0.0.0-xyz-abc

)

# Requirements new
require (

    gitlab.com/my-organization/my-group/project-2 v0.0.0-wvu-def # new hash required on dependent project updates too

)

# Retain a copy of the dependency in this location also
replace gitlab.com/my-organization/my-group/project-2 => gitlab.com/my-organization/my-group/project-2.git v0.0.0-wvu-def

Steps to resolve golang issues

1. Remove go.mod and go.sum completely
   1. Note: Technically we can remove go.sum and just remove all dependencies from go.mod but keep the module and go version lines.
2. Run go mod tidy -e, this will allow us to resolve dependencies but may fail on the mock portions, this will be resolved later.
   1. -e states that for errors we simply continue without failing.
3. Run go generate ./... to generate any mocks now that most dependencies are resolved.
4. Re-run go mod tidy -e to catch any mock related issues that were found in the previous step.

Side note - GitLab private repo access

If your project is in a private repository and has a dependency within another private repo you will need to update your GitLab project permissions as of GitLab version 15.9.

References:

• Allow access to your project with a job token
• GitLab access token setups
• GitLab subgroups and private repos

Resolving GitLab go get behavior

Using .netrc to override go get behavior seems to be required for Golang to play nicely. There are 2 changes, one for local development and one for GitLab pipelines.

Local development

# ~/.netrc
machine gitlab.com
login my-gitlab-username
password my-personal-access-token

Pipelines

The below can be generated in the CI pipeline as some form of script.

# ~/.netrc
machine gitlab.com
login gitlab-ci-token
password <my CI token here>