Is there any way to avoid pants analyzing a bunch of go dependencies whenever it starts if I'm not actually trying to do anything with the,m?

Are you running whole repo commands? Or is your command line focused on just python code, say?

I was building some docker images, but they should not have any dependency on the go code

hmm.. could be if some rule asks for

AllTargets

that could explain it..

I still see it on a smaller set of rules, e.g.

$ pants -ldebug package ux:dashboard
16:15:12.11 [WARN] DEPRECATED: Not explicitly providing [python-infer].use_rust_parser is scheduled to be removed in version 2.18.0.dev0.

Read the help for [python-infer].use_rust_parser <<https://www.pantsbuild.org/v2.17/docs/reference-python-infer#use_rust_parser>>, then set the value in pants.toml.
⠋ 0.85s Scheduling: Download Go module <http://github.com/gin-gonic/gin@v1.8.1|github.com/gin-gonic/gin@v1.8.1>.
Interrupted by user.

Yeah, the way dep inference works, it analyzes all sources to find out what they provide. There is currently no logic to say "in practice go will never provide deps to be consumed by Python"

Is there some equivalent of lockfiles for go that would make this fast?

I think the go backend has to analyze 3rdparty source code to figure out what it provides, whereas with JVM and Python that information comes from metadata. @fast-nail-55400 is the expert here though.