[syvolt]

What if I'm already using techniques, such as sandboxing, to prevent the tools from doing anything unexpected? Why bring this entire mess of indirect dependencies into my project if I'm just using a tool to occasionally analyze my binary's output size? Or a tool to lint my protobuf files?

[wakawaka28]

If it's a build dependency, then you have to have it. If you don't like the size of the tool then take it up with the authors. I'm not a Go programmer by the way, this is all just obvious to me.

[syvolt]

The functionality we're discussing can be used for tools that are not build dependencies. They may be important for your project and worth having contributors be on the same version but not part of the build.

It will still add the dependencies of those tools as indirect dependencies to your go.mod file, that is what's being discussed.