> by choosing the lowest version specified in any package that depends on a given package
It picks the highest version specified in any of the requirements. (That's the minimal version that simultaneously satisfies each individual requirement, where each individual requirement is saying "I require vX.Y.Z or higher". So if A requires Foo v1.2.3 and B requires Foo v1.2.4, v1.2.4 is selected as the minimal version that satisfies both A and B, and that's true even if v1.2.5 exists).
That did confuse me a lot. Selecting the maximum makes a lot more sense, since that gets SemVer assumptions correct.
Are we not talking about the transitively pinned dependencies in the "lock" section, or are we talking about logical constraints?
Logical constraints would make more sense, but if the constraints on C across various transitive deps are > 1.5 and > 1.8, and 1.9 or 1.10 exists, I probably want the last version of those.
No, you end up with the highest explicitly required version. So 1.8 in that scenario, if I followed. (Requiring 1.5 is declaring support for "1.5 or higher". Requiring 1.8 is declaring support for "1.8 or higher". 1.8 satisfies both of those requirements).
> if the constraints on C across various transitive deps are > 1.5 and > 1.8, and 1.9 or 1.10 exists, I probably want the last version of those.
By default, you get 1.8 (for reasons outlined upthread and in the blog post & related links), but you have the option of getting the latest version of C at any time of your choosing (e.g., 'go get C@latest', or 'go get -u ./...' to get latest versions of all dependencies, and so on).
Also, you are using the word "pin". The way it works is that the top-level module in a build has the option to force a particular version of any direct or indirect dependency, but intermediate modules in a build cannot. So as the author of the top-level module, you could force a version of C if you needed to, but for example your dependency B cannot "pin" C in your build.
If your dependencies are as broken as you’re describing, you’re in for a world of hurt no matter the solution. I also can't remember ever encountering that situation.
The lack of a depsolver is a curious choice...
I don't think my example was remotely "broken" at all, that's just another day doing software development.
It's not the norm for me. If this is what you consider to be the norm, then this kind of statement doesn't make me feel any better about Ruby.
I will say that Bundler is one of the better package managers, but the existence of the constraint solver doesn't fix this problem -- Bundler doesn't allow you to have multiple versions of a single dependency. The problem is fundamentally the dependency not maintaining its compatibility guarantees, which I would definitely call "broken". Sometimes breakage is unavoidable, like with security fixes that you want to be available even to users of existing SemVer versions, but it should not be a common situation.