The new multi-module workspaces help provide an alternative way of working with multiple modules without using replace in your go.mod file.

https://go.dev/doc/tutorial/workspaces

It took quite a bit of debate to convince maintainers that go install should error on replace statements rather then outright ignoring them which would have made go install create a different untested artifact compared to git clone && go build which made no sense to me. It would be backward compatible now to start respecting at least some types of replaces at least but that’s another debate.