Go Systems Programming

Using external Go packages

Sometimes packages are available on the internet and you would prefer to use them by specifying their internet address. One such example is the Go MySQL driver that can be found at github.com/go-sql-driver/mysql.

Look at the following Go code, which is saved as useMySQL.go:

package main 
 
import ( 
   "fmt" 
   _ "github.com/go-sql-driver/mysql") 
 
func main() { 
   fmt.Println("Using the MySQL Go driver!") 
} 

The use of _ as the package identifier will make the compiler ignore the fact that the package is not being used: the only sensible reason for bypassing the compiler is when you have an init function in your unused package that you want to be executed. The other sensible reason is for illustrating a Go concept!

If you try ...