`go mod download` is for explicitly populating the cache. If you just run `go build`, the cache will be implicitly populated. You don't need to run `go mod download` before doing a build.

Here’s the issue it comes out of: https://github.com/golang/go/issues/26610

Wait, so this command was born out of necessity to get dep feature parity? This just gets better and better.

no it was added at the request of the athens project (github.com/gomods/athens) so there would be a canonical way to download modules that we could use to prime the cache.

Categorically wrong - please don't spread lies.

I opened the original issue in question due to lack of feature parity and it got quickly closed (https://github.com/golang/go/issues/26610#event-1753880630). Then after some twitter back-and-forth (https://twitter.com/sgnn7/status/1022547467466956802) the issue got reopened.

go mod started out with a bunch of flags, and was only later converted to the current syntax: https://github.com/golang/go/commit/6121987a10b2c54bc4c48473...

From the commit message:

> We've avoided subcommands in the go command to date, and we should continue to avoid adding them unless it really makes the experience significantly better. In this case, it does.

So, I don’t see it as a contradiction to the mail you’re quoting :)