Go tool unable to find binary. go tool: no such tool “vet”

Question

I'm running golang in a docker container. And 'go tool' is unable to find 'vet'. Could you give me ideas on how to debug this?

I've used the Dockerfile for 1.5 as a template. https://github.com/docker-library/golang/blob/51d6eacd41fe80d41105142b9ad32f575082970f/1.5/Dockerfile

ENV GOLANG_VERSION 1.5.1
ENV GOLANG_DOWNLOAD_URL https://golang.org/dl/go$GOLANG_VERSION.linux-        amd64.tar.gz
ENV GOLANG_DOWNLOAD_SHA1 46eecd290d8803887dec718c691cc243f2175fe0

RUN curl -fsSL "$GOLANG_DOWNLOAD_URL" -o golang.tar.gz \
&& echo "$GOLANG_DOWNLOAD_SHA1  golang.tar.gz" | sha1sum -c - \
&& tar -C /usr/local -xzf golang.tar.gz \
&& rm golang.tar.gz

ENV GOPATH /go
ENV PATH $GOPATH/bin:/usr/local/go/bin:$PATH

However, when I install govet with

go get golang.org/x/tools/cmd/vet 

and try

bash-4.3# go tool vet
go tool: no such tool "vet"

I have the following go environment set up:

$PATH includes $GOPATH/bin /usr/lib/go/bin:/go/bin:/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin:/sbin:/bin

bash# go env
GOARCH="amd64"
GOBIN=""
GOEXE=""
GOHOSTARCH="amd64"
GOHOSTOS="linux"
GOOS="linux"
GOPATH="/go"
GORACE=""
GOROOT="/usr/lib/go"
GOTOOLDIR="/usr/lib/go/pkg/tool/linux_amd64"
GO15VENDOREXPERIMENT=""
CC="gcc"
GOGCCFLAGS="-fPIC -m64 -pthread -fmessage-length=0"
CXX="g++"
CGO_ENABLED="1"
bash# ls $GOPATH/bin
fgt               go-junit-report   godep             golint            mt-content-blogs  vet   
bash# ls $GOROOT/bin/
go     gofmt

The crux of the issue is that go tools does not list vet, even after installing it with go get golang.org/x/tools/cmd/vet

bash# go tool
addr2line
api
asm
cgo
compile
dist
doc
fix
link
nm
objdump
pack
pprof
trace
yacc

Answer 1

Warning: starting Go 1.12 (February 2019, 3.5 years later), go tool vet won't be available at all. Only go vet .

See go 1.12 release notes :

The go vet command has been rewritten to serve as the base for a range of different source code analysis tools. See the golang.org/x/tools/go/analysis package for details.

A side-effect is that go tool vet is no longer supported .
External tools that use go tool vet must be changed to use go vet .
Using go vet instead of go tool vet should work with all supported versions of Go.

As part of this change, the experimental -shadow option is no longer available with go vet .
Checking for variable shadowing may now be done using:

go install golang.org/x/tools/go/analysis/passes/shadow/cmd/shadow
go vet -vettool=$(which shadow)

Answer 2

Figured out the issue. It appears that I had missed installing go tools on the base docker image that I was using.

RUN apk --update-cache --allow-untrusted \
--repository http://dl-3.alpinelinux.org/alpine/edge/community/ \
--arch=x86_64 add \
go=${GOLANG_VERSION}-r3 \
go-tools=${GOLANG_VERSION}-r3 \
git \
&& rm -rf /var/cache/apk/* \
&& mkdir -p /go/src /go/bin \
&& chmod -R 777 /go