[majewsky]

> you were likely broken (or using a specialized build tool that handled this for you)

Or you're using the isolated-GOPATH trick.

  $ mkdir -p .gopath/src/github.com/foo
  $ ln -s ../../../.. .gopath/src/github.com/foo/bar 
  $ GOPATH=$PWD/.gopath go install github.com/foo/bar

For example, this is one of my Go projects where you can unpack the release tarball anywhere and `make && make install` just works: https://github.com/sapcc/swift-http-import