The problem is not the env var, because whether or not it was set or with a default value, you have to clone the project https://github.com/foo/bar.git at ~/go/src/github.com/foo/bar and name the imports github.com/foo/bar accordingly and run the go commands from there. I used to (automatically) just export GOPATH="${PWD}/.gopath" but this doesn't work anymore since 1.8 or 1.9.

People† at large just want to clone https://github.com/foo/bar.git wherever they see fit, like directly at ~/Workspace/bar, ~/work/bar, ~/projects/contrib/bar or even /tmp/bar.

† "People" includes CI systems that expect the typical "clone and cd straight into" thing to work, resulting in a lot of boilerplate and/or symlink hacks to work around such expectations.

> Because you didn't want to set an env var?

You haven't needed to set a GOPATH since 1.8, which was released over a year ago (we're now at 1.10). Since 1.8, the Go toolchain will use a default GOPATH; the environment variable is only needed as an override.

GOPATH has a default. Unix: $HOME/go Windows: %USERPATH%/go

but on ci servers it could be akward.