[ngrilly]

> They could have adopted dep and improved on it.

Not really because:

- The scope is different. dep is a package management tool. vgo is more than that. vgo intends to fully replace the go command. This is how we deprecate GOPATH.

- The underlying principles are different enough to make it difficult to "improve" on dep. It looked easier to start from scratch.

References:

"Go += Package Versioning", Russ Cox, https://research.swtch.com/vgo-intro

"FAQ: Why is the proposal not “use Dep”?", Russ Cox, https://github.com/golang/go/issues/24301#issuecomment-37122...

[sagichmal]

dep was always written with the intention that it would be merged into or replace to go tool. And it's still not settled that the underlying principles of vgo are valid -- which this article begins to unpack.