Go Roadmap

This page lists features and ideas being developed or discussed by the Go team. This list will be updated as work continues.

The roadmap should be discussed on the golang-nuts mailing list.

Language roadmap

This is a list of language changes that are being considered. Appearance on this list is no guarantee that the change will be accepted.

• Possibly rewrite restriction on goto across variable declarations.
• Variant types. A way to define a type as being the union of some set of types.
• Generics. An active topic of discussion.
• Methods for operators, to allow a type to use arithmetic notation for expressions.
• Possibly allow top-level packages to be given names other than main.

Implementation roadmap

• Improved garbage collector.
• Debugger.
• App Engine support.
• Improved implementation documentation.

Gc compiler roadmap

• Implement goto restrictions.
• Improved optimization.
• Use escape analysis to keep more data on stack.

Gccgo compiler roadmap

• Implement goto restrictions.
• Use goroutines rather than threads.
• Separate gcc interface from frontend proper.
• Use escape analysis to keep more data on stack.

Tools roadmap

• Strengthen goinstall until it can displace make for most builds.

Packages roadmap

• Faster, RE2-like regular expressions.
• Comprehensive support for international text.
• Support for international dates, times, etc.
• Support for multilingual messages.

Done

• gc: Generate DWARF debug info.
• gc: Provide gdb support for runtime facilities.
• Safe compilation mode: generate code that is guaranteed not to obtain an invalid memory address other than via import "unsafe".
• Gccgo: garbage collection.
• SWIG support.
• Simpler semicolon rules.
• A more general definition of ... in parameter lists.
• Explicit conversions from string to []byte and []int.
• A function that will be run by the garbage collector when an item is freed (runtime.SetFinalizer).
• Public continuous build and benchmark infrastructure (gobuilder).
• Package manager (goinstall).
• A means of recovering from a panic (recover).
• 5g: Better floating point support.
• Improved CGO including some mechanism for calling back from C to Go.
• Faster, allocation-light reflection.