DRAFT RELEASE NOTES — Introduction to Go 1.18

Go 1.18 is not yet released. These are work-in-progress release notes. Go 1.18 is expected to be released in February 2022.

Changes to the language

TODO: complete this section

Generics

Go 1.18 includes an implementation of generics as described by the proposal.

The current generics implementation has the following limitations:

Ports

FreeBSD

Go 1.18 is the last release that is supported on FreeBSD 11.x, which has already reached end-of-life. Go 1.19 will require FreeBSD 12.2+ or FreeBSD 13.0+. FreeBSD 13.0+ will require a kernel with the COMPAT_FREEBSD12 option set (this is the default).

AMD64

Go 1.18 introduces the new GOAMD64 environment variable which selects a version of the AMD64 architecture. Allowed values are v1, v2, v3, or v4. Each higher level requires, and takes advantage of, additional processor features. A detailed description of the versions is here.

The GOAMD64 environment variable defaults to v1.

PPC64

TODO: https://golang.org/cl/353969: internal/buildcfg: enable register ABI for PPC64

RISC-V

The 64-bit RISC-V architecture on Linux (the linux/riscv64 port) now supports the c-archive and c-shared build modes.

Tools

Go command

go get no longer builds or installs packages in module-aware mode. go get is now dedicated to adjusting dependencies in go.mod. Effectively, the -d flag is always enabled. To install the latest version of an executable outside the context of the current module, use go install example.com/cmd@latest. Any version query may be used instead of latest. This form of go install was added in Go 1.16, so projects supporting older versions may need to provide install instructions for both go install and go get. go get now reports an error when used outside a module, since there is no go.mod file to update. In GOPATH mode (with GO111MODULE=off), go get still builds and installs packages, as before.

The go command now embeds version control information in binaries including the currently checked-out revision, commit time, and a flag indicating whether edited or untracked files are present. Version control information is embedded if the go command is invoked in a directory within a Git, Mercurial, Fossil, or Bazaar repository, and the main package and its containing main module are in the same repository. This information may be omitted using the flag -buildvcs=false.

Additionally, the go command embeds information about the build including build and tool tags (set with -tags), compiler, assembler, and linker flags (like -gcflags), whether cgo was enabled, and if it was, the values of the cgo environment variables (like CGO_CFLAGS). This information may be omitted using the flag -buildinfo=false. Both VCS and build information may be read together with module information using go version -m file or runtime/debug.ReadBuildInfo (for the currently running binary) or the new debug/buildinfo package.

If the main module's go.mod file specifies go 1.17 or higher, go mod download without arguments now downloads source code for only the modules explicitly required in the main module's go.mod file. (In a go 1.17 or higher module, that set already includes all dependencies needed to build the packages and tests in the main module.) To also download source code for transitive dependencies, use go mod download all.

The go mod vendor subcommand now supports a -o flag to set the output directory. (Other go commands still read from the vendor directory at the module root when loading packages with -mod=vendor, so the main use for this flag is for third-party tools that need to collect package source code.)

gofmt

gofmt now reads and formats input files concurrently, with a memory limit proportional to GOMAXPROCS. On a machine with multiple CPUs, gofmt should now be significantly faster.

Runtime

TODO: complete this section, or delete if not needed

Compiler

TODO: https://golang.org/cl/298611: cmd/compile: add -asan option

TODO: https://golang.org/cl/352057: cmd/compile, runtime: track argument stack slot liveness

Linker

TODO: https://golang.org/cl/298610: cmd/link: add -asan option

Core library

New constraints package

TODO: https://golang.org/cl/349709: constraints: new package

New net/netip package

The new net/netip package defines a new IP address type, Addr. Compared to the existing net.IP type, the netip.Addr type takes less memory, is immutable, and is comparable so it supports == and can be used as a map key.

In addition to Addr, the package defines AddrPort, representing an IP and port, and Prefix, representing a network CIDR prefix.

The net package now has methods to send and receive UDP packets using netip.Addr values instead of the relatively heavy *net.UDPAddr values.

TODO

TODO: complete this section

Minor changes to the library

As always, there are various minor changes and updates to the library, made with the Go 1 promise of compatibility in mind.

TODO: complete this section

bufio

TODO: https://golang.org/cl/345569: add Writer.AvailableBuffer

TODO: https://golang.org/cl/345570: make Reader.Reset and Writer.Reset work on the zero value

bytes

TODO: https://golang.org/cl/332771: avoid allocations in Trim/TrimLeft/TrimRight

The Title function is now deprecated. It doesn't handle Unicode punctuation and language-specific capitalization rules, and is superseded by the golang.org/x/text/cases package.

crypto/tls

TODO: https://golang.org/cl/325250: add Conn.NetConn method

debug/buildinfo

This new package provides access to module versions, version control information, and build flags embedded in executable files built by the go command. The same information is also available via runtime/debug.ReadBuildInfo for the currently running binary and via go version -m on the command line.

image/draw

The Draw and DrawMask fallback implementations (used when the arguments are not the most common image types) are now faster when those arguments implement the optional draw.RGBA64Image and image.RGBA64Image interfaces that were added in Go 1.17.

net

TODO: https://golang.org/cl/340261: deprecate (net.Error).Temporary

net/http

On WebAssembly targets, the Dial, DialContext, DialTLS and DialTLSContext method fields in Transport will now be correctly used, if specified, for making HTTP requests.

TODO: https://golang.org/cl/338590: add Cookie.Valid method

os/user

TODO: https://golang.org/cl/330753: implement go native GroupIds

reflect

The new Value.SetIterKey and Value.SetIterValue methods set a Value using a map iterator as the source. They are equivalent to Value.Set(iter.Key()) and Value.Set(iter.Value()) but do fewer allocations.

The new Value.UnsafePointer method returns the Value's value as an unsafe.Pointer. This allows callers to migrate from Value.UnsafeAddr and Value.Pointer to eliminate the need to perform uintptr to unsafe.Pointer conversions at the callsite (as unsafe.Pointer rules require).

TODO: https://golang.org/cl/321889: allocate hiter as part of MapIter

TODO: https://golang.org/cl/321891: add MapIter.Reset

TODO: https://golang.org/cl/345486: optimize for maps with string keys

TODO: https://golang.org/cl/352131: add Value.{CanInt, CanUint, CanFloat, CanComplex}

TODO: https://golang.org/cl/357962: add FieldByIndexErr

regexp

TODO: https://golang.org/cl/354569: document and implement that invalid UTF-8 bytes are the same as U+FFFD

strconv

TODO: https://golang.org/cl/343877: reject surrogate halves in Unquote

strings

TODO: https://golang.org/cl/345849: add Clone function

TODO: https://golang.org/cl/332771: avoid allocations in Trim/TrimLeft/TrimRight

The Title function is now deprecated. It doesn't handle Unicode punctuation and language-specific capitalization rules, and is superseded by the golang.org/x/text/cases package.

sync

TODO: https://golang.org/cl/319769: add Mutex.TryLock, RWMutex.TryLock, RWMutex.TryRLock

syscall

The new function SyscallN has been introduced for Windows, allowing for calls with arbitrary number of arguments. As a result, Syscall, Syscall6, Syscall9, Syscall12, Syscall15, and Syscall18 are deprecated in favor of SyscallN.

TODO: https://golang.org/cl/355570: add support for SysProcAttr.Pdeathsig on FreeBSD

syscall/js

TODO: https://golang.org/cl/356430: remove Wrapper interface

testing

TODO: https://golang.org/cl/343883: increase alternation precedence

TODO: https://golang.org/cl/356669: skip extra -count iterations if there are no tests

text/template

TODO: https://golang.org/cl/321490: implement short-circuit and, or

unicode/utf8

The AppendRune function appends the UTF-8 new encoding of a rune to a []byte.