Go 1.11 Rc1 released | Hacker News Reader

Go 1.11 Rc1 released

golang.org

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Release notes are available at: https://tip.golang.org/doc/go1.11

Headline features (as judged by me) are:

* A new WebAssembly backend, js/wasm, for the gc compiler.

* Preliminary support for modules, i.e., the first step towards a package manager built into the Go command.

* Improved support for debuggers, especially Delve.

* Removal of many direct system calls from the macOS runtime. Unlike on Linux, the macOS system call interface is not considered stable. Go 1.11 binaries are now less likely to break when you upgrade your macOS version because system calls are made through the proper channel (libc).

To get a test of what's actually in the release candidate check out https://github.com/golang/go/milestone/62

A lot of new stuff with the new go modules work including vgo and some interesting wasm work.

Extremely relevant: We need to talk about Go modules https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7GGr3S41gjM

There has been some tremendous improvements for ARM architecture. If you run some serious code on raspberry PIs, get ready to be amazed.

I skimmed the release notes, and only a little mention there ARM specific changes, can you elaborate on what tremendous improvements are made? Very curious!

Yes, the release notes are a bit humble about it.

Specifically, optimized assembly instructions are used now in crypto code and also lot of optimizations have gone into the ARM assembler.

One example - https://gist.github.com/carlosedp/f85274ef2a9bacc773cf8ddeed....

What is the current recommendation for dependency management in Go for a new project?

dep was the tool I used. There are a few other solutions but this one was most popular when I last looked.

https://github.com/golang/dep

Go modules are the future but use dep as of now

I was using dep but recently switched back to Glide since dep's future is uncertain.

Go is still one of the most difficult and counter intuitive build systems ever devised. Usually you’d expect a project to build out of the box. Go seems to take a stance of “Haha nope, get ready to figure out which version of the standard library this 4 month old project was written against, then have fun trying to update it to the latest.”

I like the language though. Their green threads are still the best.

For what it is worth, I agree 100% and dependency management tools like Glide have been indispensable for me.

> Go is still one of the most difficult and counter intuitive build systems ever devised.

I'm currently working on building all the coreclr/corefx repos for .NET Core. Their build system is incredibly convoluted.

From Go's 1.0 compatibility guarantee[0]:

> It is intended that programs written to the Go 1 specification will continue to compile and run correctly, unchanged, over the lifetime of that specification. [...] Go programs that work today should continue to work even as future "point" releases of Go 1 arise (Go 1.1, Go 1.2, etc.).

I've found this to be upheld in practice, especially so for the standard library. I have yet to come across a case where I was concerned with which "version" of the standard library some project was written against. Are you perhaps talking about non-stdlib packages?

[0]: https://golang.org/doc/go1compat

My experience has been the same, so it’s hard to understand where shawn is coming from. There have been impressively few breaking changes to the Go standard library since 1.0.

Even when bringing in a number of third-party packages, the only trouble I’ve had building Go projects has been in Windows (which is often treated by Gophers as a second-class platform).

Can you tell at least one specific example where they broke the standard library?

It figures that my critique would be undermined by the choice of a single word.

Look, maybe the stdlib is rock solid. But every time I try to build a Go project, `go build` finds ten ways not to work.

Case in point: https://github.com/cretz/tor-dht-poc

Try building this. I have no idea what's wrong with it, but it doesn't work. It's cool tech, I want it, but I don't want to immerse myself in the world of hurt^WGo just to get it.

I did however at least attempt to fix the problem: https://github.com/cretz/tor-dht-poc/pull/2

The 'problem' is that the authors did not use dep (soon to be modules) and add the Gopkg.[toml|lock] files.

Or that such tools aren't shipped and part of the standard Go experience.

Fortunately that's changing.

ant, maven and gradle are not shipped with the JVM, yet the java community figures out how to do a build system somehow.

in fairness, Java has an excuse that it’s ancient in language terms and expectations were different then.

Go, not so much - it came out in 2012. Pip and CPAN and Gem had been around for years. Go’s lack of a sane packaging solution this far into its lifetime remains a serious weakness of an otherwise solid platform.

One could argue that golang is a solid platform because they focused on the platform first, instead of the package management. It is all about priorities.

Java doesn't bundle and market a `java get` command that works fine until it suddenly dosn't.

The `go get` command was never marketed as a versioned package management tool. `go get` also works just fine if you point it at forked repositories that you control.

> The `go get` command was never marketed as a versioned package management tool.

Because the Go team kept pushing the ridiculous idea that versioning doesn't matter.

> `go get` also works just fine if you point it at forked repositories that you control.

And at that point, what value does `go get` add?

It has nothing to do with Go the language itself. There are tools for that and lazy authors have the same problem with other languages also.

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