Pin go.mod dependencies for different k8s api versions

General Discussions
1

My golang service uses k8s go api to communicate with Kubernetes clusters. Some of them are v1.9.6, while some clusters of v1.17.0 were recently added.

I am using go.mod to manage dependencies. However I am having trouble combining dependencies of different versions.

For example using dependencies for the old API look like this:

module k8sOld

go 1.13

replace k8s.io/api => k8s.io/api v0.0.0-20180127130940-acf347b865f2

require (
	k8s.io/api v0.0.0-20180127130940-acf347b865f2
	k8s.io/apimachinery v0.0.0-20180126010752-19e3f5aa3adc
	k8s.io/client-go v6.0.1-0.20180321184741-e56f95336983+incompatible
	k8s.io/kube-openapi v0.0.0-20200615155156-dffdd1682719 
)

When I added newer version of Kubernetes API I tried it like this:

 module k8sOld    

 go 1.13
    
    replace k8s.io/api => k8s.io/api v0.0.0-20180127130940-acf347b865f2
    replace k8s.io/api/new => k8s.io/api v0.17.0
    
    require (
    	k8s.io/api v0.0.0-20180127130940-acf347b865f2
    	k8s.io/apimachinery v0.0.0-20180126010752-19e3f5aa3adc
    	k8s.io/client-go v6.0.1-0.20180321184741-e56f95336983+incompatible
    	k8s.io/kube-openapi v0.0.0-20200615155156-dffdd1682719 
	    k8s.io/api v0.17.0
	    k8s.io/apimachinery v0.17.0
	    k8s.io/client-go v0.17.0
	)

I named the package for new packages “k8s.io/{subpackage}/new” and used replace to point to the newer version.

I am not sure if this is ok and that is the first question.
The second and most basic one is ,supposing I find a way to refer to newer version, how can I refer subpackages of packages?

For example how can I use k8s.io/api/core/v1?

“k8s.io/api/{VERSION NAMING CONVENTION}/core/v1”

I tried naming it, but it does not seem to work.
I also tried adding k8s.io/api/core/v1 {version number} to the require part of go.mod, but it cannot be used this way.

Any ideas on how I can use different versions of k8s go api under the same hood?