Download protocol

Athens builds on top of Go CLI which specifies a set of endpoints with which it communicates with external proxies providing modules. This set of endpoints we call Download Protocol

The original vgo research paper on Download protocol can be found here: https://research.swtch.com/vgo-module

Each of these endpoints sits on top of a module. Let’s assume module htp authored by acidburn.

So for each of the endpoints mentioned below we will assume address acidburn/htp/@v/{endpoint} (e.g acidburn/htp/@v/list)

In the examples below, $HOST and $PORT are placeholders for the host and port of your Athens server.

List of versions

This endpoint returns a list of versions that Athens knows about for acidburn/htp. The list is just separated by newlines:

GET $HOST:$PORT/github.com/acidburn/htp/@v/list
v0.1.0
v0.1.1
v1.0.0
v1.0.1
v1.2.0

Version info

GET $HOST:$PORT/github.com/acidburn/htp/@v/v1.0.0.info

This returns JSON with information about v1.0.0. It looks like this:

{
    "Name": "v1.0.0",
    "Short": "v1.0.0",
    "Version": "v1.0.0",
    "Time": "1972-07-18T12:34:56Z"
}

Go.mod file

GET $HOST:$PORT/github.com/acidburn/htp/@v/v1.0.0.mod

This returns the go.mod file for version v1.0.0. If $HOST:$PORT/github.com/acidburn/htp version v1.0.0 has no dependencies, the response body would look like this:

module github.com/acidburn/htp

Module sources

GET $HOST:$PORT/github.com/acidburn/htp/@v/v1.0.0.zip

This is what it sounds like — it sends back a zip file with the source code for the module in version v1.0.0.

Latest

GET $HOST:$PORT/github.com/acidburn/htp/@latest

This endpoint returns the latest version of the module. If the version does not exist it should retrieve the hash of latest commit.

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