How to Resolve golang.org/x Package Download Failures with Proxies and Go Modules

Problem Description

When using go get, go install, or go mod, packages under golang.org/x/... frequently fail to download, interrupting development work. $ go get -u golang.org/x/sys The command fails, as shown in the screenshot.

Set Proxy

If you have a proxy server, set the environment variables http_proxy and https_proxy to point to it.

export http_proxy=http://proxyAddress:port
export https_proxy=http://proxyAddress:port

Example with proxy 192.168.21.1:1080:

export http_proxy=http://192.168.21.1:1080
export https_proxy=http://192.168.21.1:1080

After setting the proxy, the go get command succeeds.

$ go get -u golang.org/x/sys

Manual Download

If no proxy is available, you can manually clone a mirror repository from GitHub (e.g., zieckey/golang.org) into $GOPATH/src/golang.org/x.

mkdir $GOPATH/src/golang.org/x
cd $GOPATH/src/golang.org/x
git clone [email protected]:golang/text.git

Note: this method cannot specify versions because most mirrors lack tags.

Use go mod replace

Since Go 1.11, modules are supported. Enable modules with export GO111MODULE=on and add a replace directive in go.mod to map the blocked package to a reachable repository.

module example.com/demo

require (
    golang.org/x/text v0.3.0
)

replace (
    golang.org/x/text => github.com/golang/text v0.3.0
)

Use GOPROXY

Go 1.11 also introduces the GOPROXY environment variable. Setting it to a proxy such as https://goproxy.io allows downloading blocked packages without additional configuration.

export GO111MODULE=on
export GOPROXY=https://goproxy.io

On Windows PowerShell: $env:GOPROXY = "https://goproxy.io" After setting, the command succeeds and the package is stored under $GOPATH/pkg/mod/golang.org/x/.