go-bindata-assetfs | Serves embedded files | HTTP library

Downloading cockroachdb using go get I get a $GOPATH/src/github.com/cockroachdb/cockroach with a size of 664MB.

I then tried to clone the github repo for cockroachdb it has a size of 304MB most of which is because of the .git hidden folder which is 263MB.

Downloading a zipfile from the github ui and unpacking it I end up with a 42MB folder.

The pure git cloned repo and the zipfile version however lacks the vendor folder which you can read about here. It accounts for another 302MB. The folder is populated with the dependencies of cockroachdb when go get is used to download the repo (I'm guessing that it follows the link to the vendor repo for cockroach that you can see on the github page).

Since I've done this from the master branch my sizes are a bit different from the v0.1-alpha version. But I'm guessing that it has a similar cause for the size difference.

To get it to "work" using the zipfile you could try to extract the zipfile to $GOPATH/src/github.com/cockroachdb/cockroach. Then do a git init in that folder. And then follow the instructions in the README for in that tag which indicate that you should run make build. However, I believe you will still need to get some of cockroachdb's dependencies, so it is probably a lot simpler to just follow the official instructions.

I haven't tried it, but are you certain that make install causes new downloads each time you run it?