go/doc/devel/release.html

<!-- Release History -->

<h2 id="Releases">Release History</h2>

<p>This page summarizes the changes between tagged releases of Go.
For full details, see the <a href="http://code.google.com/p/go/source/list">Mercurial change log</a>.</p>

<h3 id="2011-03-07">2011-03-07</h3>

<pre>
This release includes changes to the reflect and path packages.
Code that uses reflect or path may need to be updated.

The reflect package's Value.Addr method has been renamed to Value.UnsafeAddr.
Code that uses the Addr method will have to call UnsafeAddr instead.

The path package has been split into two packages: path and path/filepath.
Package path manipulates slash-separated paths, regardless of operating system.
Package filepath implements the local operating system's native file paths.
OS-specific functioanlity in pacakge path, such as Walk, moved to filepath.

Other changes:
* build: fixes and simplifications (thanks Dave Cheney),
        move $GOBIN ahead of /bin, /usr/bin in build $PATH.
* bzip2: speed up decompression.
* cgo: fix dwarf type parsing (thanks Gustavo Niemeyer),
        put temporary source files in _obj (thanks Roger Peppe),
        fix bug involving 0-argument callbacks.
* compress/lzw: optimizations.
* doc: add FAQ about "implements",
        add FAQ about large binaries ,
        add FAQ about stack vs heap allocation,
        add internationalization to roadmap,
        describe platform-specific conventions in code.html.
* fmt: allow recursive calls to Fscan etc (thanks Roger Peppe),
        make %#p suppress leading 0x.
* gc, gopack: add some missing flags to the docs.
* gc: fix init of packages named main (thanks Gustavo Niemeyer),
* gob: make recursive map and slice types work, and other fixes.
        tentative support for GobEncoder/GobDecoder interfaces.
* gobuilder: add -package flag to build external packages and -v for verbose.
* gofmt: exclude test file that is not legal Go.
* goinstall: protect against malicious filenames (thanks Roger Peppe).
* goyacc: provide -p flag to set prefix for names, documentation update.
* http: add cookie support (thanks Petar Maymounkov),
        allow handlers to send non-chunked responses,
        export ParseHTTPVersion,
        expose Client's Transport,
        use WriteProxy,
        rename ClientTransport to Transport.
* http/cgi: new package.
* http/httptest: new package.
* image: add a decoding test for common file formats.
* io/ioutil: add TempDir.
* mime/multipart: Header changed from map to MIMEHeader
* path/filepath: new OS-specific path support (thanks Gustavo Niemeyer).
* reflect: add PtrTo, add Value.Addr (old Addr is now UnsafeAddr).
* runtime: use kernel-supplied compare-and-swap on linux/arm.
* spec: minor clarification of scope rule for functions.
* sync/atomic: new package to expose atomic operations.
* syscall: regenerate zerrors_freebsd_amd64.go (thanks Mikio Hara),
        work around FreeBSD execve kernel bug (thanks Devon H. O'Dell).
* template: document the delimiters.
* testing: run GC before each benchmark run (thanks Roger Peppe).
* unsafe: fix the documentation.
* websocket: use httptest.Server for tests (thanks Robert Hencke).
* xml: permit nested directives (thanks Chris Dollin).
</pre>

<h3 id="2011-02-24">2011-02-24</h3>

<pre>
This release includes changes to the http package and a small language change.
Your code will require changes if it manipulates http Headers or omits the
condition in if statements.

The new http.Header type replaces map[string]string in the Header and Trailer
fields of http.Request and http.Response.
A Header value can be manipulated via its Get, Set, Add, and Del methods.
See http://golang.org/pkg/http/#Header

The condition is now mandatory in if statements.
Previously it would default to true, as in switch and for statements.
This code is now illegal:
	if x := foo(); {
		// code that is always executed
	}
The same effect can be achieved like this:
	if x := foo(); true {
		// code
	}
Or, in a simpler form:
	{
		x := foo()
		// code
	}

Other changes:
* 6l: new -Hwindowsgui flag allows to build windows gui pe (thanks Alex Brainman),
	pe fixes (thanks Wei Guangjing).
* 8l, 6l: allow for more os threads to be created on Windows (thanks Alex Brainman),
* build: reduce the use of subshells in recursive make, and
	remove unused NaCl conditional from make.bash (thanks Dave Cheney).
* codereview: fix clpatch with empty diffs (thanks Gustavo Niemeyer).
* compress/bzip2: add package.
* compress/lzw: implement a decoder.
* crypto/openpgp: add package.
* crypto/rand: add read buffer to speed up small requests (thanks Albert Strasheim).
* crypto/rsa: left-pad OAEP results when needed.
* crypto/tls: make protocol negotiation failure fatal.
* fmt: stop giving characters to the Scan method of Scanner when we hit a newline in Scanln.
* gc: interface error message fixes,
	make string const comparison unsigned (thanks Jeff R. Allen).
* go spec: minor clarification on channel types.
* go/ast, parser: condition in if statement is mandatory.
* gob: compute information about a user's type once.
	protect against pure recursive types.
* godoc: accept symbolic links as path names provided to -path,
	add robots.txt, log errors when reading filter files.
* html: tokenize HTML comments.
* http: add proxy support (thanks Yasuhiro Matsumoto),
	implement with net/textproto (thanks Petar Maymounkov),
	send full URL in proxy requests,
	introduce start of Client and ClientTransport.
* image/png: support for more formats (thanks Mikael Tillenius).
* json: only use alphanumeric tags,
	use base64 to encode []byte (thanks Roger Peppe).
* ld: detect stack overflow due to NOSPLIT, drop rpath, support weak symbols.
* misc/dashboard/builder: talk to hg with utf-8 encoding.
* misc/dashboard: notify golang-dev on build failure.
* net: *netFD.Read to return os.EOF on eof under windows (thanks Alex Brainman),
	add IPv4 multicast to UDPConn (thanks Dave Cheney),
	more accurate IPv4-in-IPv6 API test (thanks Mikio Hara),
	reject invalid net:proto network names (thanks Olivier Antoine).
* netchan: allow use of arbitrary connections (thanks Roger Peppe).
* os: add ENODATA and ENOTCONN (thanks Albert Strasheim).
* reflect: add a couple of sentences explaining how Methods operate,
	add a secret method to ArrayOrSliceType to ensure it’s only implemented by arrays and slices,
	add pointer word to CommonType (placeholder for future work).
* runtime-gdb.py: gdb pretty printer for go strings properly handles length.
* runtime: various bug fixes, more complete stack traces,
	record $GOROOT_FINAL for runtime.GOROOT.
* spec: delete incorrect mention of selector working on pointer to interface type.
* sync: add Cond (thanks Gustavo Niemeyer).
* syscall: add MCL_* flags for mlockall (thanks Albert Strasheim),
	implement chmod() for win32 (thanks Yasuhiro Matsumoto).
* test/bench: update timings for new GC.
* testing: rename cmdline flags to avoid conflicts (thanks Gustavo Niemeyer).
* textproto: introduce Header type (thanks Petar Maymounkov).
* websocket: use new interface to access Header.
</pre>

<h3 id="2011-02-15">2011-02-15</h3>

<pre>
This release includes changes to the io, os, and template packages.
You may need to update your code.

The io.ReadByter and io.ReadRuner interface types have been renamed to
io.ByteReader and io.RuneReader respectively.

The os package's ForkExec function has been superseded by the new StartProcess
function and an API built around the Process type:
	http://golang.org/pkg/os/#Process

The order of arguments to template.Execute has been reversed to be consistent
the notion of "destination first", as with io.Copy, fmt.Fprint, and others.

Gotest now works for package main in directories using Make.cmd-based makefiles.

The memory allocation runtime problems from the last release are not completely
fixed.  The virtual memory exhaustion problems encountered by people using
ulimit -v have been fixed, but there remain known garbage collector problems
when using GOMAXPROCS > 1.

Other changes:
* 5l: stopped generating 64-bit eor.
* 8l: more work on plan9 support (thanks Yuval Pavel Zholkover).
* archive/zip: handle files with data descriptors.
* arm: working peep-hole optimizer.
* asn1: marshal true as 255, not 1.
* buffer.go: minor optimization, expanded comment.
* build: drop syslog on DISABLE_NET_TESTS=1 (thanks Gustavo Niemeyer),
       allow clean.bash to work on fresh checkout,
       change "all tests pass" message to be more obvious,
       fix spaces in GOROOT (thanks Christopher Nielsen).
* bytes: fix bug in buffer.ReadBytes (thanks Evan Shaw).
* 5g: better int64 code,
       don’t use MVN instruction.
* cgo: don't run cgo when not compiling (thanks Gustavo Niemeyer),
       fix _cgo_run timestamp file order (thanks Gustavo Niemeyer),
       fix handling of signed enumerations (thanks Gustavo Niemeyer),
       os/arch dependent #cgo directives (thanks Gustavo Niemeyer),
       rename internal f to avoid conflict with possible C global named f.
* codereview: fix hgpatch on windows (thanks Yasuhiro Matsumoto),
       record repository, base revision,
       use cmd.communicate (thanks Yasuhiro Matsumoto).
* container/ring: replace Iter() with Do().
* crypto/cipher: add resync open to OCFB mode.
* crypto/openpgp/armor: bug fixes.
* crypto/openpgp/packet: new subpackage.
* crypto/tls: load a chain of certificates from a file,
       select best cipher suite, not worst.
* crypto/x509: add support for name constraints.
* debug/pe: ImportedSymbols fixes (thanks Wei Guangjing).
* doc/code: update to reflect that package names need not be unique.
* doc/codelab/wiki: a bunch of fixes (thanks Andrey Mirtchovski).
* doc/install: update for new versions of Mercurial.
* encoding/line: fix line returned after EOF.
* flag: allow hexadecimal (0xFF) and octal (0377) input for integer flags.
* fmt.Scan: scan binary-exponent floating format, 2.4p-3,
       hexadecimal (0xFF) and octal (0377) integers.
* fmt: document %%; also %b for floating point.
* gc, ld: detect stale or incompatible object files,
       package name main no longer reserved.
* gc: correct receiver in method missing error (thanks Lorenzo Stoakes),
       correct rounding of denormal constants (thanks Eoghan Sherry),
       select receive bug fix.
* go/printer, gofmt: smarter handling of multi-line raw strings.
* go/printer: line comments must always end in a newline,
       remove notion of "Styler", remove HTML mode.
* gob: allow Decode(nil) and have it just discard the next value.
* godoc: use IsAbs to test for absolute paths (fix for win32) (thanks Yasuhiro Matsumoto),
       don't hide package lookup error if there's no command with the same name.
* gotest: enable unit tests for main programs.
* http: add Server type supporting timeouts,
       add pipelining to ClientConn, ServerConn (thanks Petar Maymounkov),
       handle unchunked, un-lengthed HTTP/1.1 responses.
* io: add RuneReader.
* json: correct Marshal documentation.
* netchan: graceful handling of closed connection (thanks Graham Miller).
* os: implement new Process API (thanks Alex Brainman).
* regexp tests: make some benchmarks more meaningful.
* regexp: add support for matching against text read from RuneReader interface.
* rpc: make more tolerant of errors, properly discard values (thanks Roger Peppe).
* runtime: detect failed thread creation on Windows,
       faster allocator, garbage collector,
       fix virtual memory exhaustion,
       implemented windows console ctrl handler (SIGINT) (thanks Hector Chu),
       more detailed panic traces, line number work,
       improved Windows callback handling (thanks Hector Chu).
* spec: adjust notion of Assignability,
       allow import of packages named main,
       clarification re: method sets of newly declared pointer types,
       fix a few typos (thanks Anthony Martin),
       fix Typeof() return type (thanks Gustavo Niemeyer),
       move to Unicode 6.0.
* sync: diagnose Unlock of unlocked Mutex,
       new Waitgroup type (thanks Gustavo Niemeyer).
* syscall: add SetsockoptIpMreq (thanks Dave Cheney),
       add sockaddr_dl, sysctl with routing message support for darwin, freebsd (thanks Mikio Hara),
       do not use NULL for zero-length read, write,
       implement windows version of Fsync (thanks Alex Brainman),
       make ForkExec acquire the ForkLock under windows (thanks Hector Chu),
       make windows API return errno instead of bool (thanks Alex Brainman),
       remove obsolete socket IO control (thanks Mikio Hara).
* template: add simple formatter chaining (thanks Kyle Consalus),
       allow a leading '*' to indirect through a pointer.
* testing: include elapsed time in test output
* windows: replace remaining __MINGW32__ instances with _WIN32 (thanks Joe Poirier).
</pre>

<h3 id="2011-02-01">2011-02-01</h3>

<pre>
This release includes significant changes to channel operations and minor
changes to the log package. Your code will require modification if it uses
channels in non-blocking communications or the log package's Exit functions.

Non-blocking channel operations have been removed from the language.
The equivalent operations have always been possible using a select statement
with a default clause.  If a default clause is present in a select, that clause
will execute (only) if no other is ready, which allows one to avoid blocking on
a communication.

For example, the old non-blocking send operation,

	if ch <- v {
		// sent
	} else {
		// not sent
	}

should be rewritten as,

	select {
	case ch <- v:
		// sent
	default:
		// not sent
	}

Similarly, this receive,

	v, ok := <-ch
	if ok {
		// received
	} else {
		// not received
	}

should be rewritten as,

	select {
	case v := <-ch:
		// received
	default:
		// not received
	}

This change is a prelude to redefining the 'comma-ok' syntax for a receive.
In a later release, a receive expression will return the received value and an
optional boolean indicating whether the channel has been closed. These changes
are being made in two stages to prevent this semantic change from silently
breaking code that uses 'comma-ok' with receives.
There are no plans to have a boolean expression form for sends.

Sends to a closed channel will panic immediately. Previously, an unspecified
number of sends would fail silently before causing a panic.

The log package's Exit, Exitf, and Exitln functions have been renamed Fatal,
Fatalf, and Fatalln respectively. This brings them in line with the naming of
the testing package. 

The port to the "tiny" operating system has been removed. It is unmaintained
and untested. It was a toy to show that Go can run on raw hardware and it
served its purpose. The source code will of course remain in the repository
history, so it could be brought back if needed later.

This release also changes some of the internal structure of the memory
allocator in preparation for other garbage collector changes. 
If you run into problems, please let us know.
There is one known issue that we are aware of but have not debugged yet:
	http://code.google.com/p/go/issues/detail?id=1464&.

Other changes in this release:
* 5l: document -F, force it on old ARMs (software floating point emulation)
* 6g: fix registerization of temporaries (thanks Eoghan Sherry),
        fix uint64(uintptr(unsafe.Pointer(&x))).
* 6l: Relocate CMOV* instructions (thanks Gustavo Niemeyer),
        windows/amd64 port (thanks Wei Guangjing).
* 8l: add PE dynexport, emit DWARF in Windows PE, and
        code generation fixes (thanks Wei Guangjing).
* bufio: make Flush a no-op when the buffer is empty.
* bytes: Add Buffer.ReadBytes, Buffer.ReadString (thanks Evan Shaw).
* cc: mode to generate go-code for types and variables.
* cgo: define CGO_CFLAGS and CGO_LDFLAGS in Go files (thanks Gustavo Niemeyer),
        windows/386 port (thanks Wei Guangjing).
* codereview: fix windows (thanks Hector Chu),
        handle file patterns better,
        more ASCII vs. Unicode nonsense.
* crypto/dsa: add support for DSA.
* crypto/openpgp: add s2k.
* crypto/rand: use defer to unlock mutex (thanks Anschel Schaffer-Cohen).
* crypto/rsa: correct docstring for SignPKCS1v15.
* crypto: add package, a common place to store identifiers for hash functions.
* doc/codelab/wiki: update to work with template changes, add to run.bash.
* doc/spec: clarify address operators.
* ebnflint: exit with non-zero status on error.
* encoding/base32: new package (thanks Miek Gieben).
* encoding/line: make it an io.Reader too.
* exec: use custom error for LookPath (thanks Gustavo Niemeyer).
* fmt/doc: define width and precision for strings.
* gc: clearer error for struct == struct,
        fix send precedence,
        handle invalid name in type switch,
        special case code for single-op blocking and non-blocking selects.
* go/scanner: fix build (adjust scanner EOF linecount).
* gob: better debugging, commentary,
        make nested interfaces work,
        report an error when encoding a non-empty struct with no public fields.
* godoc: full text index for whitelisted non-Go files,
        show line numbers for non-go files (bug fix).
* gofmt -r: match(...) arguments may be nil; add missing guards.
* govet: add Panic to the list of functions.
* http: add host patterns (thanks Jose Luis Vázquez González),
        follow relative redirect in Get.
* json: handle capital floating point exponent (1E100) (thanks Pieter Droogendijk).
* ld: add -I option to set ELF interpreter,
        more robust decoding of reflection type info in generating dwarf.
* lib9: update to Unicode 6.0.0.
* make.bash: stricter selinux test (don't complain unless it is enabled).
* misc/vim: Import/Drop commands (thanks Gustavo Niemeyer),
        set 'syntax sync' to a large value (thanks Yasuhiro Matsumoto).
* net: fix race condition in test,
        return cname in LookupHost.
* netchan: avoid race condition in test,
        fixed documentation for import (thanks Anschel Schaffer-Cohen).
* os: add ETIMEDOUT (thanks Albert Strasheim).
* runtime: generate Go defs for C types,
        implementation of callback functions for windows (thanks Alex Brainman),
        make Walk web browser example work (thanks Hector Chu),
        make select fairer,
        prefer fixed stack allocator over general memory allocator,
        simpler heap map, memory allocation.
* scanner: fix Position returned by Scan, Pos,
        don't read ahead in Init.
* suffixarray: use binary search for both ends of Lookup (thanks Eric Eisner).
* syscall: add missing network interface constants (thanks Mikio Hara).
* template: treat map keys as zero, not non-existent (thanks Roger Peppe).
* time: allow cancelling of After events (thanks Roger Peppe),
        support Solaris zoneinfo directory.
* token/position: added SetLinesForContent.
* unicode: update to unicode 6.0.0.
* unsafe: add missing case to doc for Pointer.
</pre>

<h3 id="2011-01-20">2011-01-20</h3>

<pre>
This release removes the float and complex types from the language.

The default type for a floating point literal is now float64, and
the default type for a complex literal is now complex128.

Existing code that uses float or complex must be rewritten to
use explicitly sized types.

The two-argument constructor cmplx is now spelled complex.
</pre>

<h3 id="2011-01-19">2011-01-19</h3>

<pre>
The 5g (ARM) compiler now has registerization enabled.  If you discover it
causes bugs, use 5g -N to disable the registerizer and please let us know.

The xml package now allows the extraction of nested XML tags by specifying
struct tags of the form "parent>child". See the XML documentation for an
example: http://golang.org/pkg/xml/

* 5a, 5l, 6a, 6l, 8a, 8l: handle out of memory, large allocations (thanks Jeff R. Allen).
* 8l: pe changes (thanks Alex Brainman).
* arm: fixes and improvements.
* cc: fix vlong condition.
* cgo: add complex float, complex double (thanks Sebastien Binet),
        in _cgo_main.c define all provided symbols as functions.
* codereview: don't mail change lists with no files (thanks Ryan Hitchman).
* crypto/cipher: add OFB mode.
* expvar: add Float.
* fmt: document %X of string, []byte.
* gc, runtime: make range on channel safe for multiple goroutines.
* gc: fix typed constant declarations (thanks Anthony Martin).
* go spec: adjust language for constant typing.
* go/scanner: Make Init take a *token.File instead of a *token.FileSet.
* godoc: bring back "indexing in progress" message,
        don't double HTML-escape search result snippets,
        enable qualified identifiers ("math.Sin") as query strings again,
        peephole optimization for generated HTML,
        remove tab before formatted section.
* gofmt, go/printer: do not insert extra line breaks where they may break the code.
* http: fix Content-Range and Content-Length in response (thanks Clement Skau),
        fix scheme-relative URL parsing; add ParseRequestURL,
        handle HEAD requests correctly,
        support for relative URLs.
* math: handle denormalized numbers in Frexp, Ilogb, Ldexp, and Logb (thanks Eoghan Sherry).
* net, syscall: return source address in Recvmsg (thanks Albert Strasheim).
* net: add LookupAddr (thanks Kyle Lemons),
        add unixpacket (thanks Albert Strasheim),
        avoid nil dereference if /etc/services can't be opened (thanks Corey Thomasson),
        implement windows timeout (thanks Wei Guangjing).
* netchan: do not block sends; implement flow control (thanks Roger Peppe).
* regexp: reject bare '?'. (thanks Ben Lynn)
* runtime/cgo: don't define crosscall2 in dummy _cgo_main.c.
* runtime/debug: new package for printing stack traces from a running goroutine.
* runtime: add per-pause gc stats,
        fix arm reflect.call boundary case,
        print signal information during panic.
* spec: specify that int and uint have the same size.
* syscall: correct WSTOPPED on OS X,
        correct length of GNU/Linux abstract Unix domain sockaddr,
        correct length of SockaddrUnix.
* tutorial: make stdin, stdout, stderr work on Windows.
* windows: implement exception handling (thanks Hector Chu).
</pre>

<h3 id="2011-01-12">2011-01-12</h3>

<pre>
The json, gob, and template packages have changed, and code that uses them
may need to be updated after this release. They will no longer read or write
unexported struct fields. When marshalling a struct with json or gob the
unexported fields will be silently ignored. Attempting to unmarshal json or
gob data into an unexported field will generate an error. Accessing an
unexported field from a template will cause the Execute function to return
an error.

Godoc now supports regular expression full text search, and this
functionality is now available on golang.org.

Other changes:
* arm: initial cut at arm optimizer.
* bytes.Buffer: Fix bug in UnreadByte.
* cgo: export unsafe.Pointer as void*, fix enum const conflict,
        output alignment fix (thanks Gustavo Niemeyer).
* crypto/block: mark as deprecated.
* crypto/openpgp: add error and armor.
* crypto: add twofish package (thanks Berengar Lehr).
* doc/spec: remove Maxalign from spec.
* encoding/line: new package for reading lines from an io.Reader.
* go/ast: correct end position for Index and TypeAssert expressions.
* gob: make (en|dec)code(Ui|I)nt methods rather than functions.
* godefs: better handling of enums.
* gofmt: don't attempt certain illegal rewrites,
        rewriter matches apply to expressions only.
* goinstall: preliminary support for cgo packages (thanks Gustavo Niemeyer).
* hg: add cgo/_cgo_* to .hgignore.
* http: fix text displayed in Redirect.
* ld: fix exported dynamic symbols on Mach-O,
        permit a Mach-O symbol to be exported in the dynamic symbol table.
* log: add methods for exit and panic.
* net: use closesocket api instead of CloseHandle on Windows (thanks Alex Brainman).
* netchan: make fields exported for gob change.
* os: add Sync to *File, wraps syscall.Fsync.
* runtime/cgo: Add callbacks to support SWIG.
* runtime: Restore scheduler stack position if cgo callback panics.
* suffixarray: faster creation algorithm (thanks Eric Eisner).
* syscall: fix mksysnum_linux.sh (thanks Anthony Martin).
* time.NewTicker: panic for intervals <= 0.
* time: add AfterFunc to call a function after a duration (thanks Roger Peppe),
        fix tick accuracy when using multiple Tickers (thanks Eoghan Sherry).</pre>

<h3 id="2011-01-06">2011-01-06</h3>

<pre>
This release includes several fixes and changes:

* build: Make.pkg: use installed runtime.h for cgo.
* cgo: disallow use of C.errno.
* crypto/cipher: fix OCFB,
        make NewCBCEncrypter return BlockMode.
* doc: 6l: fix documentation of -L flag,
        add golanguage.ru to foreign-language doc list,
        effective go: explain the effect of repanicking better,
        update Effective Go for template API change,
        update contribution guidelines to prefix the change description.
* encoding/binary: reject types with implementation-dependent sizes (thanks Patrick Gavlin).
* exp/evalsimple fix handling of slices like s[:2] (thanks Sebastien Binet).
* fmt: made format string handling more efficient,
        normalize processing of format string.
* gc: return constant floats for parts of complex constants (thanks Anthony Martin),
        rewrite complex /= to l = l / r (thanks Patrick Gavlin),
        fix &^=.
* go/ast: provide complete node text range info.
* gob: generate a better error message in one confusing place.
* godoc: fix godoc -src (thanks Icarus Sparry).
* goinstall: add -clean flag (thanks Kyle Lemons),
        add checkout concept (thanks Caine Tighe),
        fix -u for bzr (thanks Gustavo Niemeyer).
* http: permit empty Reason-Phrase in response Status-Line.
* io: fix Copyn EOF handling.
* net: fix close of Listener (thanks Michael Hoisie).
* regexp: fix performance bug, make anchored searches fail fast,
        fix prefix bug.
* runtime/cgo: fix stackguard on FreeBSD/amd64 (thanks Anthony Martin).
* strconv: atof: added 'E' as valid token for exponent (thanks Stefan Nilsson),
        update ftoa comment for 'E' and 'G'.
* strings: fix description of FieldsFunc (thanks Roger Peppe).
* syscall: correct Linux Splice definition,
        make Access second argument consistently uint32.
</pre>

<h3 id="2010-12-22">2010-12-22</h3>

<pre>
A small release this week. The most significant change is that some 
outstanding cgo issues were resolved.

* cgo: handle references to symbols in shared libraries.
* crypto/elliptic: add serialisation and key pair generation.
* crypto/hmac: add HMAC-SHA256 (thanks Anthony Martin).
* crypto/tls: add ECDHE support ("Elliptic Curve Diffie Hellman Ephemeral"),
        add support code for generating handshake scripts for testing.
* darwin, freebsd: ignore write failure (during print, panic).
* exp/draw: remove Border function.
* expvar: quote StringFunc output, same as String output.
* hash/crc64: fix typo in Sum.
* ld: allow relocations pointing at ELF .bss symbols, ignore stab symbols.
* misc/cgo/life: fix, add to build.
* regexp: add HasMeta, HasOperator, and String methods to Regexp.
* suffixarray: implemented FindAllIndex regexp search.
* test/bench: update numbers for regex-dna after speedup to regexp.
* time: explain the formats a little better.
</pre>

<h3 id="2010-12-15">2010-12-15</h3>

<pre>
Package crypto/cipher has been started, to replace crypto/block.
As part of the changes, rc4.Cipher's XORKeyStream method signature has changed from
        XORKeyStream(buf []byte)
to
        XORKeyStream(dst, src []byte)
to implement the cipher.Stream interface.  If you use crypto/block, you'll need
to switch to crypto/cipher once it is complete.

Package smtp's StartTLS now takes a *tls.Config argument.

Package reflect's ArrayCopy has been renamed to Copy.  There are new functions
Append and AppendSlice.

The print/println bootstrapping functions now write to standard error.
To write to standard output, use fmt.Print[ln].

A new tool, govet, has been added to the Go distribution. Govet is a static
checker for Go programs. At the moment, and for the forseeable future,
it only checks arguments to print calls.

The cgo tool for writing Go bindings for C code has changed so that it no
longer uses stub .so files (like cgo_stdio.so).  Cgo-based packages using the
standard Makefiles should build without any changes.  Any alternate build
mechanisms will need to be updated.

The C and Go compilers (6g, 6c, 8g, 8c, 5g, 5c) now align structs according to
the maximum alignment of the fields they contain; previously they aligned
structs to word boundaries.  This may break non-cgo-based code that attempts to
mix C and Go.

NaCl support has been removed. The recent linker changes broke NaCl support
a month ago, and there are no known users of it.
If necessary, the NaCl code can be recovered from the repository history.

* 5g/8g, 8l, ld, prof: fix output of 32-bit values (thanks Eoghan Sherry).
* [68]l and runtime: GDB support for interfaces and goroutines.
* 6l, 8l: support for linking ELF and Mach-O .o files.
* all: simplify two-variable ranges with unused second variable (thanks Ryan Hitchman).
* arm: updated soft float support.
* codereview: keep quiet when not in use (thanks Eoghan Sherry).
* compress/flate: implement Flush, equivalent to zlib's Z_SYNC_FLUSH.
* crypto/tls: use rand.Reader in cert generation example (thanks Anthony Martin).
* dashboard: fix project tag filter.
* debug/elf, debug/macho: add ImportedLibraries, ImportedSymbols.
* doc/go_mem: goroutine exit is not special.
* event.go: another print glitch from gocheck.
* gc: bug fixes,
        syntax error for incomplete chan type (thanks Ryan Hitchman).
* go/ast: fix ast.Walk.
* gob: document the byte count used in the encoding of values,
        fix bug sending zero-length top-level slices and maps,
        Register should use the original type, not the indirected one.
* godashboard: support submitting projects with non-ascii names (thanks Ryan Hitchman)
* godefs: guard against structs with pad fields
* godoc: added textual search, to enable use -fulltext flag.
* gofmt: simplify "x, _ = range y" to "x = range y".
* gopack: allow ELF/Mach-O objects in .a files without clearing allobj.
* go/token,scanner: fix comments so godoc aligns properly.
* govet: on error continue to the next file (thanks Christopher Wedgwood).
* html: improved parsing.
* http: ServeFile handles Range header for partial requests.
* json: check for invalid UTF-8.
* ld: allow .o files with no symbols,
        reading of ELF object files,
        reading of Mach-O object files.
* math: change float64 bias constant from 1022 to 1023 (thanks Eoghan Sherry),
        rename the MinFloat constant to SmallestNonzeroFloat.
* nm: silently ignore .o files in .a files.
* os: fix test of RemoveAll.
* os/inotify: new package (thanks Balazs Lecz).
* os: make MkdirAll work with symlinks (thanks Ryan Hitchman).
* regexp: speed up by about 30%; also simplify code for brackets.
* runtime/linux/386: set FPU to 64-bit precision.
* runtime: remove paranoid mapping at 0.
* suffixarray: add Bytes function.
* syscall: add network interface constants for linux/386, linux/amd64 (thanks Mikio Hara).
* syscall/windows: restrict access rights param of OpenProcess(),
        remove \r and \n from error messages (thanks Alex Brainman).
* test/bench: fixes to timing.sh (thanks Anthony Martin).
* time: fix bug in Ticker: shutdown using channel rather than memory.
* token/position: provide FileSet.File, provide files iterator.
* xml: disallow invalid Unicode code points (thanks Nigel Kerr).
</pre>

<h3 id="2010-12-08">2010-12-08</h3>

<pre>
This release includes some package changes. If you use the crypto/tls or
go/parser packages your code may require changes.

The crypto/tls package's Dial function now takes an additional *Config
argument.  Most uses will pass nil to get the same default behavior as before.
See the documentation for details:
        http://golang.org/pkg/crypto/tls/#Config
        http://golang.org/pkg/crypto/tls/#Dial

The go/parser package's ParseFile function now takes a *token.FileSet as its
first argument. This is a pointer to a data structure used to store
position information. If you don't care about position information you
can pass "token.NewFileSet()". See the documentation for details:
        http://golang.org/pkg/go/parser/#ParseFile

This release also splits the patent grant text out of the LICENSE file into a
separate PATENTS file and changes it to be more like the WebM grant.
These clarifications were made at the request of the Fedora project.

Other changes:
* [68]l: generate debug info for builtin structured types, prettyprinting in gdb.
* 8l: add dynimport to import table in Windows PE (thanks Wei Guangjing).
* 8l, runtime: fix Plan 9 386 build (thanks Yuval Pavel Zholkover).
* all: fix broken calls to Printf etc.
* bufio: make Reader.Read implement io.Reader semantics (thanks Roger Peppe).
* build: allow archiver to be specified by HOST_AR (thanks Albert Strasheim).
* bytes: add Buffer.UnreadRune, Buffer.UnreadByte (thanks Roger Peppe).
* crypto/tls: fix build of certificate generation example (thanks Christian Himpel).
* doc/install: describe GOHOSTOS and GOHOSTARCH.
* errchk: accept multiple source files (thanks Eoghan Sherry).
* exec.LookPath: return os.PathError instad of os.ENOENT (thanks Michael Hoisie)..
* flag: fix format error in boolean error report,
        handle multiple calls to flag.Parse.
* fmt: add %U format for standard Unicode representation of code point values.
* gc: fix method offsets of anonymous interfaces (thanks Eoghan Sherry),
        skip undefined symbols in import . (thanks Eoghan Sherry).
* go/scanner: remove Tokenize - was only used in tests
* gobuilder: add buildroot command-line flag (thanks Devon H. O'Dell).
* html: unescape numeric entities (thanks Ryan Hitchman).
* http: Add EncodeQuery, helper for constructing query strings.
* ld: fix dwarf decoding of 64-bit reflect values (thanks Eoghan Sherry).
* math: improve accuracy of Exp2 (thanks Eoghan Sherry).
* runtime: add Goroutines (thanks Keith Rarick).
* sync: small naming fix for armv5 (thanks Dean Prichard).
* syscall, net: Add Recvmsg and Sendmsg on Linux (thanks Albert Strasheim).
* time: make After use fewer goroutines and host processes (thanks Roger Peppe).
</pre>

<h3 id="2010-12-02">2010-12-02</h3>

<pre>
Several package changes in this release may require you to update your code if
you use the bytes, template, or utf8 packages. In all cases, any outdated code
will fail to compile rather than behave erroneously.

The bytes package has changed. Its Add and AddByte functions have been removed,
as their functionality is provided by the recently-introduced built-in function
"append". Any code that uses them will need to be changed:
s = bytes.Add(s, b)    ->    s = append(s, b...)
s = bytes.AddByte(b, c)    ->    s = append(s, b)
s = bytes.Add(nil, c)    ->    append([]byte(nil), c)

The template package has changed. Your code will need to be updated if it calls
the HTMLFormatter or StringFormatter functions, or implements its own formatter
functions. The function signature for formatter types has changed to:
        func(wr io.Writer, formatter string, data ...interface{})
to allow multiple arguments to the formatter.  No templates will need updating.
See the change for examples:
        http://code.google.com/p/go/source/detail?r=2c2be793120e

The template change permits the implementation of multi-word variable
instantiation for formatters. Before one could say
        {field}
or
        {field|formatter}
Now one can also say
        {field1 field2 field3}
or
        {field1 field2 field3|formatter}
and the fields are passed as successive arguments to the formatter,
by analogy to fmt.Print.

The utf8 package has changed. The order of EncodeRune's arguments has been
reversed to satisfy the convention of "destination first".
Any code that uses EncodeRune will need to be updated.

Other changes:
* [68]l: correct dwarf location for globals and ranges for arrays.
* big: fix (*Rat) SetFrac64(a, b) when b < 0 (thanks Eoghan Sherry).
* compress/flate: fix typo in comment (thanks Mathieu Lonjaret).
* crypto/elliptic: use a Jacobian transform for better performance.
* doc/code.html: fix reference to "gomake build" (thanks Anschel Schaffer-Cohen).
* doc/roadmap: update gdb status.
* doc/spec: fixed some omissions and type errors.
* doc: some typo fixes (thanks Peter Mundy).
* exp/eval: build fix for parser.ParseFile API change (thanks Anschel Schaffer-Cohen).
* fmt: Scan accepts Inf and NaN,
        allow "% X" as well as "% x".
* go/printer: preserve newlines in func parameter lists (thanks Jamie Gennis).
* http: consume request body before next request.
* log: ensure writes are atomic (thanks Roger Peppe).
* path: Windows support for Split (thanks Benny Siegert).
* runtime: fix SysFree to really free memory on Windows (thanks Alex Brainman),
        parallel definitions in Go for all C structs.
* sort: avoid overflow in pivot calculation,
        reduced stack depth to lg(n) in quickSort (thanks Stefan Nilsson).
* strconv: Atof on Infs and NaNs.
</pre>

<h3 id="2010-11-23">2010-11-23</h3>

<pre>
This release includes a backwards-incompatible package change to the
sort.Search function (introduced in the last release).
See the change for details and examples of how you might change your code:
        http://code.google.com/p/go/source/detail?r=102866c369

* build: automatically #define _64BIT in 6c.
* cgo: print required space after parameter name in wrapper function.
* crypto/cipher: new package to replace crypto/block (thanks Adam Langley).
* crypto/elliptic: new package, implements elliptic curves over prime fields (thanks Adam Langley).
* crypto/x509: policy OID support and fixes (thanks Adam Langley).
* doc: add link to codewalks,
        fix recover() documentation (thanks Anschel Schaffer-Cohen),
        explain how to write Makefiles for commands.
* exec: enable more tests on windows (thanks Alex Brainman).
* gc: adjustable hash code in typecheck of composite literals
        (thanks to vskrap, Andrey Mirtchovski, and Eoghan Sherry).
* gc: better error message for bad type in channel send (thanks Anthony Martin).
* godoc: bug fix in relativePath,
        compute search index for all file systems under godoc's observation,
        use correct time stamp to indicate accuracy of search result.
* index/suffixarray: use sort.Search.
* net: add ReadFrom and WriteTo windows version (thanks Wei Guangjing).
* reflect: remove unnecessary casts in Get methods.
* rpc: add RegisterName to allow override of default type name.
* runtime: free memory allocated by windows CommandLineToArgv (thanks Alex Brainman).
* sort: simplify Search (thanks Roger Peppe).
* strings: add LastIndexAny (thanks Benny Siegert).
</pre>

<h3 id="2010-11-10">2010-11-10</h3>

<pre>
The birthday release includes a new Search capability inside the sort package.
It takes an unusual but very general and easy-to-use approach to searching
arbitrary indexable sorted data.  See the documentation for details:
    http://golang.org/pkg/sort/#Search

The ARM port now uses the hardware floating point unit (VFP).  It still has a
few bugs, mostly around conversions between unsigned integer and floating-point
values, but it's stabilizing.

In addition, there have been many smaller fixes and updates: 

* 6l: generate dwarf variable names with disambiguating suffix.
* container/list: make Remove return Value of removed element.
    makes it easier to remove first or last item.
* crypto: add cast5 (default PGP cipher),
    switch block cipher methods to be destination first.
* crypto/tls: use pool building for certificate checking
* go/ast: change embedded token.Position fields to named fields
    (preparation for a different position representation)
* net: provide public access to file descriptors (thanks Keith Rarick)
* os: add Expand function to evaluate environment variables.
* path: add Glob (thanks Benny Siegert)
* runtime: memequal optimization (thanks Graham Miller)
    prefix all external symbols with "runtime·" to avoid
    conflicts linking with external C libraries.
</pre>

<h3 id="2010-11-02">2010-11-02</h3>

<pre>
This release includes a language change: the new built-in function, append.
Append makes growing slices much simpler. See the spec for details:
        http://golang.org/doc/go_spec.html#Appending_and_copying_slices

Other changes:
* 8l: pe generation fixes (thanks Alex Brainman).
* doc: Effective Go: append and a few words about "..." args.
* build: fiddle with make variables.
* codereview: fix sync and download in Python 2.7 (thanks Fazlul Shahriar).
* debug/pe, cgo: add windows support (thanks Wei Guangjing <vcc.163@gmail.com>).
* go/ast: add Inspect function for easy AST inspection w/o a visitor.
* go/printer: do not remove parens around composite literals starting with
        a type name in control clauses.
* go/scanner: bug fixes, revisions, and more tests.
* gob: several fixes and documentation updates.
* godoc: bug fix (bug introduced with revision 3ee58453e961).
* gotest: print empty benchmark list in a way that gofmt will leave alone.
* http server: correctly respond with 304 NotModified (thanks Michael Hoisie).
* kate: update list of builtins (thanks Evan Shaw).
* libutf: update to Unicode 5.2.0 to match pkg/unicode (thanks Anthony Martin).
* misc/bbedit: update list of builtins (thanks Anthony Starks).
* misc/vim: update list of builtins.
* mkrunetype: install a Makefile and tweak it slightly so it can be built.
* netchan: fix locking bug.
* pidigits: minor improvements (thanks Evan Shaw).
* rpc: fix client deadlock bug.
* src: use append where appropriate (often instead of vector).
* strings: add Contains helper function (thanks Brad Fitzpatrick).
* syscall: SIO constants for Linux (thanks Albert Strasheim),
        Stat(path) on windows (thanks Alex Brainman).
* test/ken/convert.go: add conversion torture test.
* testing: add Benchmark (thanks Roger Peppe).
</pre>

<h3 id="2010-10-27">2010-10-27</h3>

<pre>
*** This release changes the encoding used by package gob. 
    If you store gobs on disk, see below. ***

The ARM port (5g) now passes all tests. The optimizer is not yet enabled, and
floating point arithmetic is performed entirely in software. Work is underway
to address both of these deficiencies.

The syntax for arrays, slices, and maps of composite literals has been
simplified. Within a composite literal of array, slice, or map type, elements
that are themselves composite literals may elide the type if it is identical to
the outer literal's element type. For example, these expressions:
	[][]int{[]int{1, 2, 3}, []int{4, 5}}
	map[string]Point{"x": Point{1.5, -3.5}, "y": Point{0, 0}}
can be simplified to:
	[][]int{{1, 2, 3}, {4, 5}}
	map[string]Point{"x": {1.5, -3.5}, "y": {0, 0}}
Gofmt can make these simplifications mechanically when invoked with the 
new -s flag.

The built-in copy function can now copy bytes from a string value to a []byte.
Code like this (for []byte b and string s): 
	for i := 0; i < len(s); i++ {
		b[i] = s[i]
	}
can be rewritten as:
	copy(b, s)

The gob package can now encode and decode interface values containing types
registered ahead of time with the new Register function. These changes required
a backwards-incompatible change to the wire format.  Data written with the old
version of the package will not be readable with the new one, and vice versa.
(Steps were made in this change to make sure this doesn't happen again.) 
We don't know of anyone using gobs to create permanent data, but if you do this
and need help converting, please let us know, and do not update to this release
yet.  We will help you convert your data.

Other changes:
* 5g, 6g, 8g: generate code for string index instead of calling function.
* 5l, 6l, 8l: introduce sub-symbols.
* 6l/8l: global and local variables and type info.
* Make.inc: delete unnecessary -fno-inline flag to quietgcc.
* arm: precise float64 software floating point, bug fixes.
* big: arm assembly, faster software mulWW, divWW.
* build: only print "You need to add foo to PATH" when needed.
* container/list: fix Remove bug and use pointer to self as identifier.
* doc: show page title in browser title bar,
        update roadmap.
* encoding/binary: give LittleEndian, BigEndian specific types.
* go/parser: consume auto-inserted semi when calling ParseExpr().
* gobuilder: pass GOHOSTOS and GOHOSTARCH to build,
        write build and benchmarking logs to disk.
* goinstall: display helpful message when encountering a cgo package,
        fix test for multiple package names (thanks Fazlul Shahriar).
* gotest: generate correct gofmt-formatted _testmain.go.
* image/png: speed up paletted encoding ~25% (thanks Brad Fitzpatrick).
* misc: update python scripts to specify python2 as python3 is now "python".
* net: fix comment on Dial to mention unix/unixgram.
* rpc: expose Server type to allow multiple RPC Server instances.
* runtime: print unknown types in panic.
* spec: append built-in (not yet implemented).
* src: gofmt -s -w src misc.
        update code to use copy-from-string.
* test/bench: update numbers.
* websocket: fix short Read.
</pre>

<h3 id="2010-10-20">2010-10-20</h3>

<pre>
This release removes the log package's deprecated functions.
Code that has not been updated to use the new interface will break.
See the previous release notes for details:
	http://golang.org/doc/devel/release.html#2010-10-13

Also included are major improvements to the linker. It is now faster, 
uses less memory, and more parallelizable (but not yet parallel).

The nntp package has been removed from the standard library.
Its new home is the nntp-go project at Google Code:
	http://code.google.com/p/nntp-go
You can install it with goinstall:
	goinstall nntp-go.googlecode.com/hg/nntp
And import it in your code like so:
	import "nntp-go.googlecode.com/hg/nntp"

Other changes:
* 6g: avoid too-large immediate constants.
* 8l, runtime: initial support for Plan 9 (thanks Yuval Pavel Zholkover).
* 6l, 8l: more improvements on exporting debug information (DWARF).
* arm: code gen fixes. Most tests now pass, except for floating point code.
* big: add random number generation (thanks Florian Uekermann).
* gc: keep track of real actual type of identifiers,
	report that shift must be unsigned integer,
	select receive with implicit conversion.
* goplay: fix to run under windows (thanks Yasuhiro Matsumoto).
* http: do not close connection after sending HTTP/1.0 request.
* netchan: add new method Hangup to terminate transmission on a channel.
* os: change TestForkExec so it can run on windows (thanks Yasuhiro Matsumoto).
* runtime: don't let select split stack.
* syscall/arm: correct 64-bit system call arguments.
</pre>

<h3 id="2010-10-13">2010-10-13</h3>

<pre>
This release includes changes to the log package, the removal of exp/iterable,
two new tools (gotry and goplay), one small language change, and many other
changes and fixes.  If you use the log or iterable packages, you need to make
changes to your code.

The log package has changed.  Loggers now have only one output, and output to
standard error by default.  The names have also changed, although the old names
are still supported.  They will be deleted in the next release, though, so it
would be good to update now if you can.  For most purposes all you need to do
is make these substitutions:
        log.Stderr -> log.Println or log.Print
        log.Stderrf -> log.Printf
        log.Crash -> log.Panicln or log.Panic
        log.Crashf -> log.Panicf
        log.Exit -> log.Exitln or log.Exit
        log.Exitf -> log.Exitf (no change)
Calls to log.New() must drop the second argument.
Also, custom loggers with exit or panic properties will need to be reworked.
For full details, see the change description:
        http://code.google.com/p/go/source/detail?r=d8a3c7563d

The language change is that uses of pointers to interface values no longer
automatically dereference the pointer.  A pointer to an interface value is more
often a beginner's bug than correct code.

The package exp/iterable has been removed. It was an interesting experiment,
but it encourages writing inefficient code and has outlived its utility.

The new tools:
* gotry: an exercise in reflection and an unusual tool. Run 'gotry' for details.
* goplay: a stand-alone version of the Go Playground. See misc/goplay.

Other changes:
* 6l: Mach-O fixes, and fix to work with OS X nm/otool (thanks Jim McGrath).
* [568]a: correct line numbers for statements.
* arm: code generation and runtime fixes,
	adjust recover for new reflect.call,
	enable 6 more tests after net fix.
* big: fix panic and round correctly in Rat.FloatString (thanks Anthony Martin).
* build: Make.cmd: remove $(OFILES) (thanks Eric Clark),
        Make.pkg: remove .so before installing new one,
        add GOHOSTOS and GOHOSTARCH environment variables.
* crypto/tls: better error messages for certificate issues,
        make SetReadTimeout work.
* doc: add Sydney University video,
	add The Expressiveness of Go talk.
* exp/draw/x11: support X11 vendors other than "The X.Org Foundation".
* expvar: add (*Int).Set (thanks Sam Thorogood).
* fmt: add Errorf helper function,
        allow %d on []byte.
* gc: O(1) string comparison when lengths differ,
        various bug fixes.
* http: return the correct error if a header line is too long.
* image: add image.Tiled type, the Go equivalent of Plan 9's repl bit.
* ld: be less picky about bad line number info.
* misc/cgo/life: fix for new slice rules (thanks Graham Miller).
* net: allow _ in DNS names.
* netchan: export before import when testing, and
        zero out request to ensure correct gob decoding. (thanks Roger Peppe).
* os: make tests work on windows (thanks Alex Brainman).
* runtime: bug fix: serialize mcache allocation,
        correct iteration of large map values,
        faster strequal, memequal (thanks Graham Miller),
        fix argument dump in traceback,
        fix tiny build.
* smtp: new package (thanks Evan Shaw).
* syscall: add sockaddr_ll support for linux/386, linux/amd64 (thanks Mikio Hara),
        add ucred structure for SCM_CREDENTIALS over UNIX sockets. (thanks Albert Strasheim).
* syscall: implement WaitStatus and Wait4() for windows (thanks Wei Guangjing).
* time: add After.
* websocket: enable tests on windows (thanks Alex Brainman).
</pre>

<h3 id="2010-09-29">2010-09-29</h3>

<pre>
This release includes some minor language changes and some significant package
changes. You may need to change your code if you use ...T parameters or the
http package.

The semantics and syntax of forwarding ...T parameters have changed.
        func message(f string, s ...interface{}) { fmt.Printf(f, s) }
Here, s has type []interface{} and contains the parameters passed to message.
Before this language change, the compiler recognized when a function call
passed a ... parameter to another ... parameter of the same type, and just
passed it as though it was a list of arguments.  But this meant that you
couldn't control whether to pass the slice as a single argument and you
couldn't pass a regular slice as a ... parameter, which can be handy.  This
change gives you that control at the cost of a few characters in the call.
If you want the promotion to ...,  append ... to the argument:
        func message(f string, s ...interface{}) { fmt.Printf(f, s...) }
Without the ..., s would be passed to Printf as a single argument of type
[]interface{}.  The bad news is you might need to fix up some of your code, 
but the compiler will detect the situation and warn you.

Also, the http.Handler and http.HandlerFunc types have changed. Where http
handler functions previously accepted an *http.Conn, they now take an interface
type http.ResponseWriter. ResponseWriter implements the same methods as *Conn,
so in most cases the only change required will be changing the type signature
of your handler function's first parameter. See:
  http://golang.org/pkg/http/#Handler

The utf8 package has a new type, String, that provides efficient indexing 
into utf8 strings by rune (previously an expensive conversion to []int 
was required). See:
  http://golang.org/pkg/utf8/#String

The compiler will now automatically insert a semicolon at the end of a file if
one is not found. This effect of this is that Go source files are no longer
required to have a trailing newline.

Other changes:
* 6prof: more accurate usage message.
* archive/zip: new package for reading Zip files.
* arm: fix code generation, 10 more package tests pass.
* asn1: make interface consistent with json.
* bufio.UnreadRune: fix bug at EOF.
* build: clear custom variables like GREP_OPTIONS,
        silence warnings generated by ubuntu gcc,
        use full path when compiling libraries.
* bytes, strings: change lastIndexFunc to use DecodeLastRune (thanks Roger Peppe).
* doc: add to and consolidate non-english doc references,
        consolidate FAQs into a single file, go_faq.html,
        updates for new http interface.
* fmt/Printf: document and tweak error messages produced for bad formats.
* gc: allow select case expr = <-c,
        eliminate duplicates in method table,
        fix reflect table method receiver,
        improve error message for x \= 0.
* go/scanner: treat EOF like a newline for purposes of semicolon insertion.
* gofmt: stability improvements.
* gotest: leave _testmain.go for "make clean" to clean up.
* http: correct escaping of different parts of URL,
        support HTTP/1.0 Keep-Alive.
* json: do not write to unexported fields.
* libcgo: don't build for NaCl,
        set g, m in thread local storage for windows 386 (thanks Wei Guangjing).
* math: Fix off-by-one error in Ilogb and Logb.  (thanks Charles L. Dorian).
* misc/dashboard/builder: remove build files after benchmarking.
* nacl: update instructions for new SDK.
* net: enable v4-over-v6 on ip sockets,
        fix crash in DialIP.
* os: check for valid arguments in windows Readdir (thanks Peter Mundy).
* runtime: add mmap of null page just in case,
        correct stats in SysFree,
        fix unwindstack crash.
* syscall: add IPPROTO_IPV6 and IPV6_V6ONLY const to fix nacl and windows build,
        add inotify on Linux (thanks Balazs Lecz),
        fix socketpair in syscall_bsd,
        fix windows value of IPV6_V6ONLY (thanks Alex Brainman),
        implement windows version of Utimes (thanks Alex Brainman),
        make mkall.sh work for nacl.
* test: Add test that causes incorrect error from gccgo.
* utf8: add DecodeLastRune and DecodeLastRuneInString (thanks Roger Peppe).
* xml: Allow entities inside CDATA tags (thanks Dan Sinclair).
</pre>

<h3 id="2010-09-22">2010-09-22</h3>

<pre>
This release includes new package functionality, and many bug fixes and changes.
It also improves support for the arm and nacl platforms.

* 5l: avoid fixed buffers in list.
* 6l, 8l: clean up ELF code, fix NaCl.
* 6l/8l: emit DWARF frame info.
* Make.inc: make GOOS detection work on windows (thanks Alex Brainman).
* build: fixes for native arn build,
        make all.bash run on Ubuntu ARM.
* cgo: bug fixes,
        show preamble gcc errors (thanks Eric Clark).
* crypto/x509, crypto/tls: improve root matching and observe CA flag.
* crypto: Fix certificate validation.
* doc: variable-width layout.
* env.bash: fix building in directory with spaces in the path (thanks Alex Brainman).
* exp/4s, exp/nacl/av: sync to recent exp/draw changes.
* exp/draw/x11: mouse location is a signed integer.
* exp/nacl/av: update color to max out at 1<<16-1 instead of 1<<32-1.
* fmt: support '*' for width or precision (thanks Anthony Martin).
* gc: improvements to static initialization,
        make sure path names are canonical.
* gob: make robust when decoding a struct with non-struct data.
* gobuilder: add -cmd for user-specified build command,
        add -rev= flag to build specific revision and exit,
        fix bug that caused old revisions to be rebuilt.
* godoc: change default filter file name to "",
        don't use quadratic algorithm to filter paths,
        show "Last update" info for directory listings.
* http: new redirect test,
        URLEscape now escapes all reserved characters as per the RFC.
* nacl: fix zero-length writes.
* net/dict: parse response correctly (thanks Fazlul Shahriar).
* netchan: add a cross-connect test,
        handle closing of channels,
        provide a method (Importer.Errors()) to recover protocol errors.
* os: make Open() O_APPEND flag work on windows (thanks Alex Brainman),
        make RemoveAll() work on windows (thanks Alex Brainman).
* pkg/Makefile: disable netchan test to fix windows build (thanks Alex Brainman).
* regexp: delete Iter methods.
* runtime: better panic for send to nil channel.
* strings: fix minor bug in LastIndexFunc (thanks Roger Peppe).
* suffixarray: a package for creating suffixarray-based indexes.
* syscall: Use vsyscall for syscall.Gettimeofday and .Time on linux amd64.
* test: fix NaCl build.
* windows: fix netchan test by using 127.0.0.1.
</pre>

<h3 id="2010-09-15">2010-09-15</h3>

<pre>
This release includes a language change: the lower bound of a subslice may
now be omitted, in which case the value will default to 0.
For example, s[0:10] may now be written as s[:10], and s[0:] as s[:].

The release also includes important bug fixes for the ARM architecture,
as well as the following fixes and changes:

* 5g: register allocation bugs
* 6c, 8c: show line numbers in -S output
* 6g, 6l, 8g, 8l: move read-only data to text segment
* 6l, 8l: make etext accurate; introduce rodata, erodata.
* arm: fix build bugs.
        make libcgo build during OS X cross-compile
        remove reference to deleted file syntax/slice.go
        use the correct stat syscalls
        work around reg allocator bug in 5g
* bufio: add UnreadRune.
* build: avoid bad environment interactions
        fix build for tiny
        generate, clean .exe files on Windows (thanks Joe Poirier)
        test for _WIN32, not _MINGW32 (thanks Joe Poirier)
        work with GNU Make 3.82 (thanks Jukka-Pekka Kekkonen)
* cgo: add typedef for uintptr in generated headers
        silence warning for C call returning const pointer
* codereview: convert email address to lower case before checking CONTRIBUTORS
* crypto/tls: don't return an error from Close()
* doc/tutorial: update for slice changes.
* exec: separate LookPath implementations for unix/windows (thanks Joe Poirier)
* exp/draw/x11: allow clean shutdown when the user closes the window.
* exp/draw: clip destination rectangle to the image bounds.
        fast path for drawing overlapping image.RGBAs.
        fix double-counting of pt.Min for the src and mask points.
        reintroduce the MouseEvent.Nsec timestamp.
        rename Context to Window, and add a Close method.
* exp/debug: preliminary support for 'copy' function (thanks Sebastien Binet)
* fmt.Fscan: use UnreadRune to preserve data across calls.
* gc: better printing of named constants, func literals in errors
        many bug fixes
        fix line number printing with //line directives
        fix symbol table generation on windows (thanks Alex Brainman)
        implement comparison rule from spec change 33abb649cb63
        implement new slice spec (thanks Scott Lawrence)
        make string x + y + z + ... + w efficient
        more accurate line numbers for ATEXT
        remove &[10]int -> []int conversion
* go-mode.el: fix highlighting for 'chan' type (thanks Scott Lawrence)
* godoc: better support for directory trees for user-supplied paths
        use correct delay time (bug fix)
* gofmt, go/printer: update internal estimated position correctly
* goinstall: warn when package name starts with http:// (thanks Scott Lawrence)
* http: check https certificate against host name
        do not cache CanonicalHeaderKey (thanks Jukka-Pekka Kekkonen)
* image: change a ColorImage's minimum point from (0, 0) to (-1e9, -1e9).
        introduce Intersect and Union rectangle methods.
* ld: handle quoted spaces in package path (thanks Dan Sinclair)
* libcgo: fix NaCl build.
* libmach: fix build on arm host
        fix new thread race with Linux
* math: make portable Tan(Pi/2) return NaN
* misc/dashboard/builder: gobuilder, a continuous build client
* net: disable tests for functions not available on windows (thanks Alex Brainman)
* netchan: make -1 unlimited, as advertised.
* os, exec: rename argv0 to name
* path: add IsAbs (thanks Ivan Krasin)
* runtime: fix bug in tracebacks
        fix crash trace on amd64
        fix windows build (thanks Alex Brainman)
        use manual stack for garbage collection
* spec: add examples for slices with omitted index expressions.
        allow omission of low slice bound (thanks Scott Lawrence)
* syscall: fix windows Gettimeofday (thanks Alex Brainman)
* test(arm): disable zerodivide.go because compilation fails.
* test(windows): disable tests that cause the build to fail (thanks Joe Poirier)
* test/garbage/parser: sync with recent parser changes
* test: Add test for //line
        Make gccgo believe that the variables can change.
        Recognize gccgo error messages.
        Reduce race conditions in chan/nonblock.go.
        Run garbage collector before testing malloc numbers.
* websocket: Add support for secure WebSockets (thanks Jukka-Pekka Kekkonen)
* windows: disable unimplemented tests (thanks Joe Poirier)
</pre>

<h3 id="2010-09-06">2010-09-06</h3>

<pre>
This release includes the syntactic modernization of more than 100 files in /test,
and these additions, changes, and fixes: 
* 6l/8l: emit DWARF in macho.
* 8g: use FCHS, not FMUL, for minus float.
* 8l: emit DWARF in ELF,
        suppress emitting DWARF in Windows PE (thanks Alex Brainman).
* big: added RatString, some simplifications.
* build: create bin and pkg directories as needed; drop from hg,
        delete Make.386 Make.amd64 Make.arm (obsoleted by Make.inc),
        fix cgo with -j2,
        let pkg/Makefile coordinate building of Go commands,
        never use quietgcc in Make.pkg,
        remove more references to GOBIN and GOROOT (thanks Christian Himpel).
* codereview: Fix uploading for Mercurial 1.6.3 (thanks Evan Shaw),
        consistent indent, cut dead code,
        fix hang on standard hg commands,
        print status when tasks take longer than 30 seconds,
        really disable codereview when not available,
        upload files in parallel (5x improvement on large CLs).
* crypto/hmac: make Sum idempotent (thanks Jukka-Pekka Kekkonen).
* doc: add links to more German docs,
        add round-robin flag to io2010 balance example,
        fix a bug in the example in Constants subsection (thanks James Fysh),
        various changes for validating HTML (thanks Scott Lawrence).
* fmt: delete erroneous sentence about return value for Sprint*.
* gc: appease bison version running on FreeBSD builder,
        fix spurious syntax error.
* go/doc: use correct escaper for URL.
* go/printer: align ImportPaths in ImportDecls (thanks Scott Lawrence).
* go/typechecker: 2nd step towards augmenting AST with full type information.
* gofmt: permit omission of first index in slice expression.
* goinstall: added -a flag to mean "all remote packages" (thanks Scott Lawrence),
        assume go binaries are in path (following new convention),
        use https for Google Code checkouts.
* gotest: allow make test of cgo packages (without make install).
* http: add Date to server, Last-Modified and If-Modified-Since to file server,
        add PostForm function to post url-encoded key/value data,
        obscure passwords in return value of URL.String (thanks Scott Lawrence).
* image: introduce Config type and DecodeConfig function.
* libcgo: update Makefile to use Make.inc.
* list: update comment to state that the zero value is ready to use.
* math: amd64 version of Sincos (thanks Charles L. Dorian).
* misc/bash: add *.go completion for gofmt (thanks Scott Lawrence).
* misc/emacs: make _ a word symbol (thanks Scott Lawrence).
* misc: add zsh completion (using compctl),
        syntax highlighting for Fraise.app (OS X) (thanks Vincent Ambo).
* net/textproto: Handle multi-line responses (thanks Evan Shaw).
* net: add LookupMX (thanks Corey Thomasson).
* netchan: Fix race condition in test,
        rather than 0, make -1 mean infinite (a la strings.Split et al),
        use acknowledgements on export send.
        new methods Sync and Drain for clean teardown.
* regexp: interpret all Go characer escapes \a \b \f \n \r \t \v.
* rpc: fix bug that caused private methods to attempt to be registered.
* runtime: Correct commonType.kind values to match compiler,
        add GOOS, GOARCH; fix FuncLine,
        special case copy, equal for one-word interface values (thanks Kyle Consalus).
* scanner: fix incorrect reporting of error in Next (thanks Kyle Consalus).
* spec: clarify that arrays must be addressable to be sliceable.
* template: fix space handling around actions.
* test/solitaire: an exercise in backtracking and string conversions.
* test: Recognize gccgo error messages and other fixes.
* time: do not crash in String on nil Time.
* tutorial: regenerate HTML to pick up change to progs/file.go.
* websocket: fix missing Sec-WebSocket-Protocol on server response (thanks Jukka-Pekka Kekkonen).
</pre>

<h3 id="2010-08-25">2010-08-25</h3>

<pre>
This release includes changes to the build system that will likely require you
to make changes to your environment variables and Makefiles.

All environment variables are now optional:
 - $GOOS and $GOARCH are now optional; their values should now be inferred 
   automatically by the build system,
 - $GOROOT is now optional, but if you choose not to set it you must run
   'gomake' instead of 'make' or 'gmake' when developing Go programs
   using the conventional Makefiles,
 - $GOBIN remains optional and now defaults to $GOROOT/bin;
   if you wish to use this new default, make sure it is in your $PATH
   and that you have removed the existing binaries from $HOME/bin.

As a result of these changes, the Go Makefiles have changed. If your Makefiles
inherit from the Go Makefiles, you must change this line:
    include ../../Make.$(GOARCH)
to this:
    include ../../Make.inc

This release also removes the deprecated functions in regexp and the 
once package. Any code that still uses them will break.
See the notes from the last release for details:
    http://golang.org/doc/devel/release.html#2010-08-11

Other changes:
* 6g: better registerization for slices, strings, interface values
* 6l: line number information in DWARF format
* build: $GOBIN defaults to $GOROOT/bin,
        no required environment variables
* cgo: add C.GoStringN (thanks Eric Clark).
* codereview: fix issues with leading tabs in CL descriptions,
        do not send "Abandoned" mail if the CL has not been mailed.
* crypto/ocsp: add missing Makefile.
* crypto/tls: client certificate support (thanks Mikkel Krautz).
* doc: update gccgo information for recent changes.
        fix errors in Effective Go.
* fmt/print: give %p priority, analogous to %T,
        honor Formatter in Print, Println.
* gc: fix parenthesization check.
* go/ast: facility for printing AST nodes,
        first step towards augmenting AST with full type information.
* go/printer: do not modify tabwriter.Escape'd text.
* gofmt: do not modify multi-line string literals,
        print AST nodes by setting -ast flag.
* http: fix typo in http.Request documentation (thanks Scott Lawrence)
        parse query string always, not just in GET
* image/png: support 16-bit color.
* io: ReadAtLeast now errors if min > len(buf).
* jsonrpc: use `error: null` for success, not `error: ""`.
* libmach: implement register fetch for 32-bit x86 kernel.
* net: make IPv6 String method standards-compliant (thanks Mikio Hara).
* os: FileInfo.Permission() now returns uint32 (thanks Scott Lawrence),
        implement env using native Windows API (thanks Alex Brainman).
* reflect: allow PtrValue.PointTo(nil).
* runtime: correct line numbers for .goc files,
        fix another stack split bug,
        fix freebsd/386 mmap.
* syscall: regenerate syscall/z* files for linux/386, linux/amd64, linux/arm.
* tabwriter: Introduce a new flag StripEscape.
* template: fix handling of space around actions,
        vars preceded by white space parse correctly (thanks Roger Peppe).
* test: add test case that crashes gccgo.
* time: parse no longer requires minutes for time zone (thanks Jan H. Hosang)
* yacc: fix bounds check in error recovery.
</pre>

<h3 id="2010-08-11">2010-08-11</h3>

<pre>
This release introduces some package changes. You may need to change your
code if you use the once, regexp, image, or exp/draw packages.

The type Once has been added to the sync package. The new sync.Once will
supersede the functionality provided by the once package. We intend to remove
the once package after this release. See:
    http://golang.org/pkg/sync/#Once
All instances of once in the standard library have been replaced with
sync.Once. Reviewing these changes may help you modify your existing code. 
The relevant changeset:
    http://code.google.com/p/go/source/detail?r=fa2c43595119

A new set of methods has been added to the regular expression package, regexp.
These provide a uniformly named approach to discovering the matches of an
expression within a piece of text; see the package documentation for details: 
    http://golang.org/pkg/regexp/
These new methods will, in a later release, replace the old methods for
matching substrings.  The following methods are deprecated:
    Execute (use FindSubmatchIndex)
    ExecuteString (use FindStringSubmatchIndex)
    MatchStrings(use FindStringSubmatch)
    MatchSlices (use FindSubmatch)
    AllMatches (use FindAll; note that n<0 means 'all matches'; was n<=0)
    AllMatchesString (use FindAllString; note that n<0 means 'all matches'; was n<=0)
(Plus there are ten new methods you didn't know you wanted.) 
Please update your code to use the new routines before the next release.

An image.Image now has a Bounds rectangle, where previously it ranged 
from (0, 0) to (Width, Height). Loops that previously looked like:
    for y := 0; y < img.Height(); y++ {
        for x := 0; x < img.Width(); x++ {
            // Do something with img.At(x, y)
        }
    }
should instead be:
    b := img.Bounds()
    for y := b.Min.Y; y < b.Max.Y; y++ {
        for x := b.Min.X; x < b.Max.X; x++ {
            // Do something with img.At(x, y)
        }
    }
The Point and Rectangle types have also moved from exp/draw to image.

Other changes:
* arm: bugfixes and syscall (thanks Kai Backman).
* asn1: fix incorrect encoding of signed integers (thanks Nicholas Waples).
* big: fixes to bitwise functions (thanks Evan Shaw).
* bytes: add IndexRune, FieldsFunc and To*Special (thanks Christian Himpel).
* encoding/binary: add complex (thanks Roger Peppe).
* exp/iterable: add UintArray (thanks Anschel Schaffer-Cohen).
* godoc: report Status 404 if a pkg or file is not found.
* gofmt: better reporting for unexpected semicolon errors.
* html: new package, an HTML tokenizer.
* image: change image representation from slice-of-slices to linear buffer,
        introduce Decode and RegisterFormat,
        introduce Transparent and Opaque,
        replace Width and Height by Bounds, add the Point and Rect types.
* libbio: fix Bprint to address 6g issues with large data structures.
* math: fix amd64 Hypot (thanks Charles L. Dorian).
* net/textproto: new package, with example net/dict.
* os: fix ForkExec() handling of envv == nil (thanks Alex Brainman).
* png: grayscale support (thanks Mathieu Lonjaret).
* regexp: document that backslashes are the escape character.
* rpc: catch errors from ReadResponseBody.
* runtime: memory free fix (thanks Alex Brainman).
* template: add ParseFile method to template.Template.
* test/peano: use directly recursive type def.
</pre>

<h3 id="2010-08-04">2010-08-04</h3>

<pre>
This release includes a change to os.Open (and co.). The file permission
argument has been changed to a uint32. Your code may require changes - a simple
conversion operation at most.

Other changes:
* amd64: use segment memory for thread-local storage.
* arm: add gdb support to android launcher script,
        bugfixes (stack clobbering, indices),
        disable another flaky test,
        remove old qemu dependency from gotest.
* bufio: introduce Peek.
* bytes: added test case for explode with blank string (thanks Scott Lawrence).
* cgo: correct multiple return value function invocations (thanks Christian Himpel).
* crypto/x509: unwrap Subject Key Identifier (thanks Adam Langley).
* gc: index bounds tests and other fixes.
* gofmt/go/parser: strengthen syntax checks.
* goinstall: check for error from exec.*Cmd.Wait() (thanks Alex Brainman).
* image/png: use image-specific methods for checking opacity.
* image: introduce Gray and Gray16 types,
        remove the named colors except for Black and White.
* json: object members must have a value (thanks Anthony Martin).
* misc/vim: highlight misspelled words only in comments (thanks Christian Himpel).
* os: Null device (thanks Peter Mundy).
* runtime: do not fall through in SIGBUS/SIGSEGV.
* strings: fix Split("", "", -1) (thanks Scott Lawrence).
* syscall: make go errors not clash with windows errors (thanks Alex Brainman).
* test/run: diff old new,
* websocket: correct challenge response (thanks Tarmigan Casebolt),
        fix bug involving spaces in header keys (thanks Bill Neubauer). 
</pre>

<h3 id="2010-07-29">2010-07-29</h3>

<pre>
* 5g: more soft float support and several bugfixes.
* asn1: Enumerated, Flag and GeneralizedTime support.
* build: clean.bash to check that GOOS and GOARCH are set.
* bytes: add IndexFunc and LastIndexFunc (thanks Fazlul Shahriar),
	add Title.
* cgo: If CC is set in environment, use it rather than "gcc",
	use new command line syntax: -- separates cgo flags from gcc flags.
* codereview: avoid crash if no config,
	don't run gofmt with an empty file list,
	make 'hg submit' work with Mercurial 1.6.
* crypto/ocsp: add package to parse OCSP responses.
* crypto/tls: add client-side SNI support and PeerCertificates.
* exp/bignum: delete package - functionality subsumed by package big.
* fmt.Print: fix bug in placement of spaces introduced when ...T went in.
* fmt.Scanf: handle trailing spaces.
* gc: fix smaller-than-pointer-sized receivers in interfaces,
	floating point precision/normalization fixes,
	graceful exit on seg fault,
	import dot shadowing bug,
	many fixes including better handling of invalid input,
	print error detail about failure to open import.
* gccgo_install.html: add description of the port to RTEMS (thanks Vinu Rajashekhar).
* gobs: fix bug in singleton arrays.
* godoc: display synopses for all packages that have some kind of documentation..
* gofmt: fix some linebreak issues.
* http: add https client support (thanks Fazlul Shahriar),
	write body when content length unknown (thanks James Whitehead).
* io: MultiReader and MultiWriter (thanks Brad Fitzpatrick),
	fix another race condition in Pipes.
* ld: many fixes including better handling of invalid input.
* libmach: correct handling of .5 files with D_REGREG addresses.
* linux/386: use Xen-friendly ELF TLS instruction sequence.
* mime: add AddExtensionType (thanks Yuusei Kuwana).
* misc/vim: syntax file recognizes constants like 1e9 (thanks Petar Maymounkov).
* net: TCPConn.SetNoDelay, back by popular demand.
* net(windows): fix crashing Read/Write when passed empty slice on (thanks Alex Brainman),
	implement LookupHost/Port/SRV (thanks Wei Guangjing),
	properly handle EOF in (*netFD).Read() (thanks Alex Brainman).
* runtime: fix bug introduced in revision 4a01b8d28570 (thanks Alex Brainman),
	rename cgo2c, *.cgo to goc2c, *.goc (thanks Peter Mundy).
* scanner: better comment.
* strings: add Title.
* syscall: add ForkExec, Syscall12 on Windows (thanks Daniel Theophanes),
	improve windows errno handling (thanks Alex Brainman).
* syscall(windows): fix FormatMessage (thanks Peter Mundy),
	implement Pipe() (thanks Wei Guangjing).
* time: fix parsing of minutes in time zones.
* utf16(windows): fix cyclic dependency when testing (thanks Peter Mundy).
</pre>

<h3 id="2010-07-14">2010-07-14</h3>

<pre>
This release includes a package change. In container/vector, the Iter method
has been removed from the Vector, IntVector, and StringVector types. Also, the
Data method has been renamed to Copy to better express its actual behavior.
Now that Vector is just a slice, any for loops ranging over v.Iter() or
v.Data() can be changed to range over v instead.

Other changes:
* big: Improvements to Rat.SetString (thanks Evan Shaw),
        add sign, abs, Rat.IsInt.
* cgo: various bug fixes.
* codereview: Fix for Mercurial >= 1.6 (thanks Evan Shaw).
* crypto/rand: add Windows implementation (thanks Peter Mundy).
* crypto/tls: make HTTPS servers easier,
        add client OCSP stapling support.
* exp/eval: converted from bignum to big (thanks Evan Shaw).
* gc: implement new len spec, range bug fix, optimization.
* go/parser: require that '...' parameters are followed by a type.
* http: fix ParseURL to handle //relative_path properly.
* io: fix SectionReader Seek to seek backwards (thanks Peter Mundy).
* json: Add HTMLEscape (thanks Micah Stetson).
* ld: bug fixes.
* math: amd64 version of log (thanks Charles L. Dorian).
* mime/multipart: new package to parse multipart MIME messages
        and HTTP multipart/form-data support.
* os: use TempFile with default TempDir for test files (thanks Peter Mundy).
* runtime/tiny: add docs for additional VMs, fix build (thanks Markus Duft).
* runtime: better error for send/recv on nil channel.
* spec: clarification of channel close(),
        lock down some details about channels and select,
        restrict when len(x) is constant,
        specify len/cap for nil slices, maps, and channels.
* windows: append .exe to binary names (thanks Joe Poirier).
</pre>

<h3 id="2010-07-01">2010-07-01</h3>

<pre>
This release includes some package changes that may require changes to 
client code.

The Split function in the bytes and strings packages has been changed.
The count argument, which limits the size of the return, previously treated
zero as unbounded. It now treats 0 as 0, and will return an empty slice.  
To request unbounded results, use -1 (or some other negative value).
The new Replace functions in bytes and strings share this behavior.
This may require you change your existing code.

The gob package now allows the transmission of non-struct values at the
top-level. As a result, the rpc and netchan packages have fewer restrictions
on the types they can handle.  For example, netchan can now share a chan int.

The release also includes a Code Walk: "Share Memory By Communicating".
It describes an idiomatic Go program that uses goroutines and channels:
	http://golang.org/doc/codewalk/sharemem/

There is now a Projects page on the Go Dashboard that lists Go programs, 
tools, and libraries:
	http://godashboard.appspot.com/project

Other changes:
* 6a, 6l: bug fixes.
* bytes, strings: add Replace.
* cgo: use slash-free relative paths for .so references.
* cmath: correct IsNaN for argument cmplx(Inf, NaN) (thanks Charles L. Dorian).
* codereview: allow multiple email addresses in CONTRIBUTORS.
* doc/codewalk: add Share Memory By Communicating.
* exp/draw/x11: implement the mapping from keycodes to keysyms.
* fmt: Printf: fix bug in handling of %#v, allow other verbs for slices
        Scan: fix handling of EOFs.
* gc: bug fixes and optimizations.
* gob: add DecodeValue and EncodeValue,
        add support for complex numbers.
* goinstall: support for Bazaar+Launchpad (thanks Gustavo Niemeyer).
* io/ioutil: add TempFile for Windows (thanks Peter Mundy).
* ld: add -u flag to check safe bits; discard old -u, -x flags.
* math: amd64 versions of Exp and Fabs (thanks Charles L. Dorian).
* misc/vim: always override filetype detection for .go files.
* net: add support for DNS SRV requests (thanks Kirklin McDonald),
        initial attempt to implement Windows version (thanks Alex Brainman).
* netchan: allow chan of basic types now that gob can handle such,
        eliminate the need for a pointer value in Import and Export.
* os/signal: only catch all signals if os/signal package imported.
* regexp: bug fix: need to track whether match begins with fixed prefix.
* rpc: allow non-struct args and reply (they must still be pointers).
* runtime: bug fixes and reorganization.
* strconv: fix bugs in floating-point and base 2 conversions
* syscall: add syscall_bsd.go to zsycall_freebsd_386.go (thanks Peter Mundy),
        add socketpair (thanks Ivan Krasin).
* time: implement time zones for Windows (thanks Alex Brainman).
* x509: support non-self-signed certs. 
</pre>

<h3 id="2010-06-21">2010-06-21</h3>

<pre>
This release includes a language change. The "..." function parameter form is
gone; "...T" remains. Typically, "...interface{}" can be used instead of "...".

The implementation of Printf has changed in a way that subtly affects its
handling of the fmt.Stringer interface. You may need to make changes to your
code. For details, see:
        https://groups.google.com/group/golang-nuts/msg/6fffba90a3e3dc06

The reflect package has been changed. If you have code that uses reflect, 
it will need to be updated. For details, see:
        https://groups.google.com/group/golang-nuts/msg/7a93d07c590e7beb

Other changes:
* 8l: correct test for sp == top of stack in 8l -K code.
* asn1: allow '*' in PrintableString.
* bytes.Buffer.ReadFrom: fix bug.
* codereview: avoid exception in match (thanks Paolo Giarrusso).
* complex divide: match C99 implementation.
* exp/draw: small draw.drawGlyphOver optimization.
* fmt: Print*: reimplement to switch on type first,
        Scanf: improve error message when input does not match format.
* gc: better error messages for interface failures, conversions, undefined symbols.
* go/scanner: report illegal escape sequences.
* gob: substitute slice for map.
* goinstall: process dependencies for package main (thanks Roger Peppe).
* gopack: add S flag to force marking a package as safe,
        simplify go metadata code.
* html: sync testdata/webkit to match WebKit tip.
* http: reply to Expect 100-continue requests automatically (thanks Brad Fitzpatrick).
* image: add an Alpha16 type.
* ld: pad Go symbol table out to page boundary (fixes cgo crash).
* misc/vim: reorganize plugin to be easier to use (thanks James Whitehead).
* path: add Base, analogous to Unix basename.
* pkg/Makefile: allow DISABLE_NET_TESTS=1 to disable network tests.
* reflect: add Kind, Type.Bits, remove Int8Type, Int8Value, etc.
* runtime: additional Windows support (thanks Alex Brainman),
        correct fault for 16-bit divide on Leopard,
        fix 386 signal handler bug.
* strconv: add AtofN, FtoaN.
* string: add IndexFunc and LastIndexFunc (thanks Roger Peppe).
* syslog: use local network for tests. 
</pre>

<h3 id="2010-06-09">2010-06-09</h3>

<pre>
This release contains many fixes and improvements, including several
clarifications and consolidations to the Language Specification.

The type checking rules around assignments and conversions are simpler but more
restrictive: assignments no longer convert implicitly from *[10]int to []int
(write x[0:] instead of &x), and conversions can no longer change the names of
types inside composite types.

The fmt package now includes flexible type-driven (fmt.Scan) and 
format-driven (fmt.Scanf) scanners for all basic types.

* big: bug fix for Quo aliasing problem.
* bufio: change ReadSlice to match description.
* cgo: bug fixes.
* doc: add Google I/O talk and programs,
        codereview + Mercurial Queues info (thanks Peter Williams).
* exp/draw: Draw fast paths for the Over operator,
        add Rectangle.Eq and Point.In, fix Rectangle.Clip (thanks Roger Peppe).
* fmt: Scan fixes and improvements.
* gc: backslash newline is not a legal escape sequence in strings,
        better error message when ~ operator is found,
        fix export of complex types,
        new typechecking rules.
* go/parser: correct position of empty statement ';'.
* gofmt: fix test script.
* goinstall: use 'git pull' instead of 'git checkout' (thanks Michael Hoisie).
* http: add Head function for making HTTP HEAD requests,
        handle status 304 correctly.
* image: add Opaque method to the image types.
        make Color.RGBA return 16 bit color instead of 32 bit color.
* io/ioutil: add TempFile.
* math: Pow special cases and additional tests (thanks Charles L. Dorian).
* netchan: improve closing and shutdown.
* os: implement os.FileInfo.*time_ns for windows (thanks Alex Brainman).
* os/signal: correct the regexp for finding Unix signal names (thanks Vinu Rajashekhar).
* regexp: optimizations (thanks Kyle Consalus).
* runtime: fix printing -Inf (thanks Evan Shaw),
        finish pchw -> tiny, added gettime for tiny (thanks Daniel Theophanes).
* spec: clean-ups and consolidation.
* syscall: additional Windows compatibility fixes (thanks Alex Brainman).
* test/bench: added regex-dna-parallel.go (thanks Kyle Consalus).
* vector: type-specific Do functions now take f(type) (thanks Michael Hoisie). 
</pre>

<h3 id="2010-05-27">2010-05-27</h3>

<pre>
A sizeable release, including standard library improvements and a slew of
compiler bug fixes. The three-week interval was largely caused by the team
preparing for Google I/O. 

* big: add Rat type (thanks Evan Shaw),
        new features, much performance tuning, cleanups, and more tests.
* bignum: deprecate by moving into exp directory.
* build: allow MAKEFLAGS to be set outside the build scripts (thanks Christopher Wedgwood).
* bytes: add Trim, TrimLeft, TrimRight, and generic functions (thanks Michael Hoisie).
* cgo: fix to permit cgo callbacks from init code.
* cmath: update range of Phase and Polar due to signed zero (thanks Charles L. Dorian).
* codereview: work better with mq (thanks Peter Williams).
* compress: renamings
	NewDeflater -> NewWriter
	NewInflater -> NewReader
	Deflater -> Compressor
	Inflater -> Decompressor
* exp/draw/x11: respect $XAUTHORITY,
        treat $DISPLAY the same way x-go-bindings does.
* exp/draw: fast path for glyph images, other optimizations,
        fix Rectangle.Canon (thanks Roger Peppe).
* fmt: Scan, Scanln: Start of a simple scanning API in the fmt package,
        fix Printf crash when given an extra nil argument (thanks Roger Peppe).
* gc: better error when computing remainder of non-int (thanks Evan Shaw),
        disallow middot in Go programs,
        distinguish array, slice literal in error messages,
        fix shift/reduce conflict in go.y export syntax,
        fix unsafe.Sizeof on ideal constants,
        handle use of builtin function outside function call,
        many other bug fixes.
* gob: add support for maps,
        add test for indirect maps, slices, arrays.
* godoc: collect package comments from all package files.
* gofmt: don't lose mandatory semicolons,
        exclude test w/ illegal syntax from test cases,
        fix printing of labels.
* http: prevent crash if remote server is not responding with "HTTP/".
* json: accept escaped slash in string scanner (thanks Michael Hoisie),
        fix array -> non-array decoding.
* libmach: skip __nl_symbol_ptr section on OS X.
* math: amd64 versions of Fdim, Fmax, Fmin,
        signed zero Sqrt special case (thanks Charles L. Dorian).
* misc/kate: convert isn't a built in function (thanks Evan Shaw).
* net: implement BindToDevice,
        implement raw sockets (thanks Christopher Wedgwood).
* netFD: fix race between Close and Read/Write (thanks Michael Hoisie).
* os: add Chtimes function (thanks Brad Fitzpatrick).
* pkg/Makefile: add netchan to standard package list.
* runtime: GOMAXPROCS returns previous value,
        allow large map values,
        avoid allocation for fixed strings,
        correct tracebacks for nascent goroutines, even closures,
        free old hashmap pieces during resizing.
* spec: added imaginary literal to semicolon rules (was missing),
        fix and clarify syntax of conversions,
        simplify section on channel types,
        other minor tweaks.
* strconv: Btoui64 optimizations (thanks Kyle Consalus).
* strings: use copy instead of for loop in Map (thanks Kyle Consalus).
* syscall: implement BindToDevice (thanks Christopher Wedgwood),
        add Utimes on Darwin/FreeBSD, add Futimes everywhere,
        regenerate syscalls for some platforms.
* template: regularize name lookups of interfaces, pointers, and methods.
</pre>

<h3 id="2010-05-04">2010-05-04</h3>

<pre>
In this release we renamed the Windows OS target from 'mingw' to 'windows'.
If you are currently building for 'mingw' you should set GOOS=windows instead.

* 5l, 6l, 8l, runtime: make -s binaries work.
* 5l, 6l, 8l: change ELF header so that strip doesn't destroy binary.
* 8l: fix absolute path detection on Windows.
* big: new functions, optimizations, and cleanups,
	add bitwise methods for Int (thanks Evan Shaw).
* bytes: Change IndexAny to look for UTF-8 encoded characters.
* darwin: bsdthread_create can fail; print good error.
* fmt: %T missing print <nil> for nil (thanks Christopher Wedgwood).
* gc: many fixes.
* misc/cgo/gmp: fix bug in SetString.
* net: fix resolv.conf EOF without newline bug (thanks Christopher Wedgwood).
* spec: some small clarifications (no language changes).
* syscall: add EWOULDBLOCK to sycall_nacl.go,
	force O_LARGEFILE in Linux open system call,
	handle EOF on pipe - special case on Windows (thanks Alex Brainman),
	mingw Sleep (thanks Joe Poirier).
* test/bench: import new fasta C reference, update Go, optimizations.
* test: test of static initialization (fails).
* vector: use correct capacity in call to make.
* xml: allow text segments to end at EOF.
</pre>

<h3 id="2010-04-27">2010-04-27</h3>

<pre>
This release includes a new Codelab that illustrates the construction of a
simple wiki web application: 
	http://golang.org/doc/codelab/wiki/

It also includes a Codewalk framework for documenting code. See:
	http://golang.org/doc/codewalk/

Other changes:
* 6g: fix need for parens around array index expression.
* 6l, 8l: include ELF header in PT_LOAD mapping for text segment.
* arm: add android runner script,
	support for printing floats.
* big: implemented Karatsuba multiplication,
	many fixes and improvements (thanks Evan Shaw).
* bytes: add Next method to Buffer, simplify Read,
	shuffle implementation, making WriteByte 50% faster.
* crypto/tls: simpler implementation of record layer.
* exp/eval: fixes (thanks Evan Shaw).
* flag: eliminate unnecessary structs.
* gc: better windows support,
	cmplx typecheck bug fix,
	more specific error for statements at top level.
* go/parser: don't require unnecessary parens.
* godoc: exclude duplicate entries (thanks Andrei Vieru),
	use int64 for timestamps (thanks Christopher Wedgwood).
* gofmt: fine-tune stripping of parentheses,
* json: Marshal, Unmarshal using new scanner,
	preserve field name case by default,
	scanner, Compact, Indent, and tests,
	support for streaming.
* libmach: disassemble MOVLQZX correctly.
* math: more special cases for signed zero (thanks Charles L. Dorian).
* net: add Pipe,
	fix bugs in packStructValue (thanks Michael Hoisie),
	introduce net.Error interface.
* os: FileInfo: regularize the types of some fields,
	create sys_bsd.go (thanks Giles Lean),
	mingw bug fixes (thanks Alex Brainman).
* reflect: add FieldByNameFunc (thanks Raif S. Naffah),
	implement Set(nil), SetValue(nil) for PtrValue and MapValue.
* regexp: allow escaping of any punctuation.
* rpc/jsonrpc: support for jsonrpc wire encoding.
* rpc: abstract client and server encodings,
	add Close() method to rpc.Client.
* runtime: closures, defer bug fix for Native Client,
	rename cgo2c, *.cgo to goc2c, *.goc to avoid confusion with real cgo.
	several other fixes.
* scanner: implement Peek() to look at the next char w/o advancing.
* strings: add ReadRune to Reader, add FieldsFunc (thanks Kyle Consalus).
* syscall: match linux Setsid function signature to darwin,
	mingw bug fixes (thanks Alex Brainman).
* template: fix handling of pointer inside interface.
* test/bench: add fannkuch-parallel.go (thanks Kyle Consalus),
	pidigits ~10% performance win by using adds instead of shifts.
* time: remove incorrect time.ISO8601 and add time.RFC3339 (thanks Micah Stetson).
* utf16: add DecodeRune, EncodeRune.
* xml: add support for XML marshalling embedded structs (thanks Raif S. Naffah),
	new "innerxml" tag to collect inner XML.
</pre>

<h3 id="2010-04-13">2010-04-13</h3>

<pre>
This release contains many changes:

* 8l: add DOS stub to PE binaries (thanks Evan Shaw).
* cgo: add //export.
* cmath: new complex math library (thanks Charles L. Dorian).
* docs: update to match current coding style (thanks Christopher Wedgwood).
* exp/eval: fix example and add target to Makefile (thanks Evan Shaw).
* fmt: change behaviour of format verb %b to match %x when negative (thanks Andrei Vieru).
* gc: compile s == "" as len(s) == 0,
	distinguish fatal compiler bug from error+exit,
	fix alignment on non-amd64,
	good syntax error for defer func() {} - missing fina (),
	implement panic and recover,
	zero unnamed return values on entry if func has defer.
* goyacc: change to be reentrant (thanks Roger Peppe).
* io/ioutil: fix bug in ReadFile when Open succeeds but Stat fails.
* kate: update for recent language changes (thanks Evan Shaw).
* libcgo: initial mingw port work - builds but untested (thanks Joe Poirier).
* math: new functions and special cases (thanks Charles L. Dorian) 
* net: use chan bool instead of chan *netFD to avoid cycle.
* netchan: allow client to send as well as receive.
* nntp: new package, NNTP client (thanks Conrad Meyer).
* os: rename os.Dir to os.FileInfo.
* rpc: don't log normal EOF,
	fix ServeConn to block as documented.
* runtime: many bug fixes, better ARM support.
* strings: add IndexRune, Trim, TrimLeft, TrimRight, etc (thanks Michael Hoisie).
* syscall: implement some mingw syscalls required by os (thanks Alex Brainman).
* test/bench: add k-nucleotide-parallel (thanks Kyle Consalus).
* Unicode: add support for Turkish case mapping.
* xgb: move from the main repository to http://code.google.com/p/x-go-binding/
</pre>

<h3 id="2010-03-30">2010-03-30</h3>

<pre>
This release contains three language changes:

1. Accessing a non-existent key in a map is no longer a run-time error.  
It now evaluates to the zero value for that type.  For example:
        x := myMap[i]   is now equivalent to:   x, _ := myMap[i]

2. It is now legal to take the address of a function's return value.  
The return values are copied back to the caller only after deferred
functions have run.

3. The functions panic and recover, intended for reporting and recovering from
failure, have been added to the spec:
	http://golang.org/doc/go_spec.html#Handling_panics 
In a related change, panicln is gone, and panic is now a single-argument
function.  Panic and recover are recognized by the gc compilers but the new
behavior is not yet implemented.

The ARM build is broken in this release; ARM users should stay at release.2010-03-22.

Other changes:
* bytes, strings: add IndexAny.
* cc/ld: Add support for #pragma dynexport,
        Rename dynld to dynimport throughout. Cgo users will need to rerun cgo.
* expvar: default publishings for cmdline, memstats
* flag: add user-defined flag types.
* gc: usual bug fixes
* go/ast: generalized ast filtering.
* go/printer: avoid reflect in print.
* godefs: fix handling of negative constants.
* godoc: export pprof debug information, exported variables,
        support for filtering of command-line output in -src mode,
        use http GET for remote search instead of rpc.
* gofmt: don't convert multi-line functions into one-liners,
        preserve newlines in multiline selector expressions (thanks Risto Jaakko Saarelma).
* goinstall: include command name in error reporting (thanks Andrey Mirtchovski)
* http: add HandleFunc as shortcut to Handle(path, HandlerFunc(func))
* make: use actual dependency for install
* math: add J1, Y1, Jn, Yn, J0, Y0 (Bessel functions) (thanks Charles L. Dorian)
* prof: add pprof from google-perftools
* regexp: don't return non-nil *Regexp if there is an error.
* runtime: add Callers,
        add malloc sampling, pprof interface,
        add memory profiling, more statistics to runtime.MemStats,
        implement missing destroylock() (thanks Alex Brainman),
        more malloc statistics,
        run all finalizers in a single goroutine,
        Goexit runs deferred calls.
* strconv: add Atob and Btoa,
        Unquote could wrongly return a nil error on error (thanks Roger Peppe).
* syscall: add IPV6 constants,
        add syscall_bsd.go for Darwin and other *BSDs (thanks Giles Lean),
        implement SetsockoptString (thanks Christopher Wedgwood).
* websocket: implement new protocol (thanks Fumitoshi Ukai).
* xgb: fix request length and request size (thanks Firmansyah Adiputra).
* xml: add CopyToken (thanks Kyle Consalus),
        add line numbers to syntax errors (thanks Kyle Consalus),
        use io.ReadByter in place of local readByter (thanks Raif S. Naffah). 
</pre>

<h3 id="2010-03-22">2010-03-22</h3>

<pre>
With this release we announce the launch of the Go Blog:
	http://blog.golang.org/
The first post is a brief update covering what has happened since the launch.

This release contains some new packages and functionality, and many fixes:
* 6g/8g: fix issues with complex data types, other bug fixes.
* Makefiles: refactored to make writing external Makefiles easier.
* crypto/rand: new package.
* godoc: implemented command-line search via RPC,
	improved comment formatting: recognize URLs.
* gofmt: more consistent formatting of const/var decls.
* http: add Error helper function,
	add ParseQuery (thanks Petar Maymounkov),
	change RawPath to mean raw path, not raw everything-after-scheme.
* image/jpeg: fix typos.
* json: add MarshalIndent (accepts user-specified indent string).
* math: add Gamma function (thanks Charles L. Dorian).
* misc/bbedit: support for cmplx, real, imag (thanks Anthony Starks).
* misc/vim: add new complex types, functions and literals.
* net: fix IPMask.String not to crash on all-0xff mask.
* os: drop File finalizer after normal Close.
* runtime: add GOROOT and Version,
	lock finalizer table accesses.
* sha512: add sha384 (truncated version) (thanks Conrad Meyer).
* syscall: add const ARCH, analogous to OS.
* syscall: further additions to mingw port (thanks Alex Brainman).
* template: fixed html formatter []byte input bug.
* utf16: new package.
* version.bash: cope with ancient Mercurial.
* websocket: use URL.RawPath to construct WebSocket-Location: header.
</pre>

<h3 id="2010-03-15">2010-03-15</h3>

<pre>
This release includes a language change: support for complex numbers.
	http://golang.org/doc/go_spec.html#Imaginary_literals
	http://golang.org/doc/go_spec.html#Complex_numbers
There is no library support as yet.

This release also includes the goinstall command-line tool. 
	http://golang.org/cmd/goinstall/
	http://groups.google.com/group/golang-nuts/t/f091704771128e32

* 5g/6g/8g: fix double function call in slice.
* arm: cleanup build warnings. (thanks Dean Prichard)
* big: fix mistakes with probablyPrime.
* bufio: add WriteRune.
* bytes: add ReadRune and WriteRune to bytes.Buffer.
* cc: stack split bug fix.
* crypto: add SHA-224 to sha256, add sha512 package. (thanks Conrad Meyer)
* crypto/ripemd160: new package. (thanks Raif S. Naffah)
* crypto/rsa: don't use safe primes.
* gc: avoid fixed length buffer cleanbuf. (thanks Dean Prichard)
	better compilation of floating point +=
	fix crash on complicated arg to make slice.
	remove duplicate errors, give better error for I.(T)
* godoc: support for multiple packages in a directory, other fixes.
* gofmt: bug fixes.
* hash: add Sum64 interface.
* hash/crc32: add Update function.
* hash/crc64: new package implementing 64-bit CRC.
* math: add ilogb, logb, remainder. (thanks Charles L. Dorian) 
* regexp: add ReplaceAllFunc, ReplaceAllStringFunc.
* runtime: clock garbage collection on bytes allocated, not pages in use.
* strings: make Split(s, "", n) faster. (thanks Spring Mc)
* syscall: minimal mingw version of syscall. (thanks Alex Brainman)
* template: add ParseFile, MustParseFile.
</pre>

<h3 id="2010-03-04">2010-03-04</h3>

<pre>
There is one language change: the ability to convert a string to []byte or 
[]int.  This deprecates the strings.Bytes and strings.Runes functions.
You can convert your existing sources using these gofmt commands:
	gofmt -r 'strings.Bytes(x) -> []byte(x)' -w file-or-directory-list
	gofmt -r 'strings.Runes(x) -> []int(x)' -w file-or-directory-list
After running these you might need to delete unused imports of the "strings" 
package.

Other changes and fixes:
* 6l/8l/5l: add -r option
* 8g: make a[byte(x)] truncate x
* codereview.py: fix for compatibility with hg >=1.4.3
* crypto/blowfish: new package (thanks Raif S. Naffah)
* dashboard: more performance tuning
* fmt: use String method in %q to get the value to quote.
* gofmt: several cosmetic changes
* http: fix handling of Connection: close, bug in http.Post
* net: correct DNS configuration,
	fix network timeout boundary condition,
	put [ ] around IPv6 addresses for Dial.
* path: add Match,
	fix bug in Match with non-greedy stars (thanks Kevin Ballard)
* strings: delete Bytes, Runes (see above)
* tests: an Eratosthenesque concurrent prime sieve (thanks Anh Hai Trinh) 
</pre>

<h3 id="2010-02-23">2010-02-23</h3>

<pre>
This release is mainly bug fixes and a little new code.
There are no language changes.

6g/5g/8g: bug fixes
8a/8l: Added FCMOVcc instructions (thanks Evan Shaw and Charles Dorian)
crypto/x509: support certificate creation
dashboard: caching to avoid datastore queries
exec: add dir argument to Run
godoc: bug fixes and code cleanups
http: continued implementation and bug fixes (thanks Petar Maymounkov)
json: fix quoted strings in Marshal (thanks Sergei Skorobogatov)
math: more functions, test cases, and benchmarks (thanks Charles L. Dorian)
misc/bbedit: treat predeclared identifiers as "keywords" (thanks Anthony Starks)
net: disable UDP server test (flaky on various architectures)
runtime: work around Linux kernel bug in futex,
	pchw is now tiny
sync: fix to work on armv5 (thanks Dean Prichard)
websocket: fix binary frame size decoding (thanks Timo Savola)
xml: allow unquoted attribute values in non-Strict mode (thanks Amrut Joshi)
	treat bool as value in Unmarshal (thanks Michael Hoisie) 
</pre>

<h3 id="2010-02-17">2010-02-17</h3>

<pre>
There are two small language changes:
* NUL bytes may be rejected in souce files, and the tools do reject them.
* Conversions from string to []int and []byte are defined but not yet implemented.

Other changes and fixes:
* 5a/6a/8a/5c/6c/8c: remove fixed-size arrays for -I and -D options (thanks Dean Prichard)
* 5c/6c/8c/5l/6l/8l: add -V flag to display version number
* 5c/6c/8c: use "cpp" not "/bin/cpp" for external preprocessor (thanks Giles Lean)
* 8a/8l: Added CMOVcc instructions (thanks Evan Shaw)
* 8l: pe executable building code changed to include import table for kernel32.dll functions (thanks Alex Brainman)
* 5g/6g/8g: bug fixes
* asn1: bug fixes and additions (incl marshalling)
* build: fix build for Native Client, Linux/ARM
* dashboard: show benchmarks, add garbage collector benchmarks
* encoding/pem: add marshalling support
* exp/draw: fast paths for a nil mask
* godoc: support for directories outside $GOROOT
* http: sort header keys when writing Response or Request to wire (thanks Petar Maymounkov)
* math: special cases and new functions (thanks Charles Dorian)
* mime: new package, used in http (thanks Michael Hoisie)
* net: dns bug fix - use random request id
* os: finalize File, to close fd.
* path: make Join variadic (thanks Stephen Weinberg)
* regexp: optimization bug fix
* runtime: misc fixes and optimizations
* syscall: make signature of Umask on OS X, FreeBSD match Linux. (thanks Giles Lean)
</pre>

<h3 id="2010-02-04">2010-02-04</h3>

<pre>
There is one language change: support for ...T parameters:
	http://golang.org/doc/go_spec.html#Function_types

You can now check build status on various platforms at the Go Dashboard: 
	http://godashboard.appspot.com

* 5l/6l/8l: several minor fixes
* 5a/6a/8a/5l/6l/8l: avoid overflow of symb buffer (thanks Dean Prichard)
* compress/gzip: gzip deflater (i.e., writer)
* debug/proc: add mingw specific build stubs (thanks Joe Poirier)
* exp/draw: separate the source-point and mask-point in Draw
* fmt: handle nils safely in Printf
* gccgo: error messages now match those of gc
* godoc: several fixes
* http: bug fixes, revision of Request/Response (thanks Petar Maymounkov)
* image: new image.A type to represent anti-aliased font glyphs
	add named colors (e.g. image.Blue), suitable for exp/draw
* io: fixed bugs in Pipe
* malloc: merge into package runtime
* math: fix tests on FreeBSD (thanks Devon H. O'Dell)
	add functions; update tests and special cases (thanks Charles L. Dorian)
* os/signal: send SIGCHLDs to Incoming (thanks Chris Wedgwood)
* reflect: add StringHeader to reflect
* runtime: add SetFinalizer
* time: Sleep through interruptions (thanks Chris Wedgwood)
	add RFC822 formats
	experimental implemenation of Ticker using two goroutines for all tickers
* xml: allow underscores in XML element names (thanks Michael Hoisie)
	allow any scalar type in xml.Unmarshal
</pre>

<h3 id="2010-01-27">2010-01-27</h3>

<pre>
There are two small language changes: the meaning of chan <- chan int
is now defined, and functions returning functions do not need to 
parenthesize the result type.

There is one significant implementation change: the compilers can
handle multiple packages using the same name in a single binary.
In the gc compilers, this comes at the cost of ensuring that you
always import a particular package using a consistent import path.
In the gccgo compiler, the cost is that you must use the -fgo-prefix
flag to pass a unique prefix (like the eventual import path).

5a/6a/8a: avoid use of fixed-size buffers (thanks Dean Prichard)
5g, 6g, 8g: many minor bug fixes
bufio: give Writer.WriteString same signature as bytes.Buffer.WriteString.
container/list: PushFrontList, PushBackList (thanks Jan Hosang)
godoc: trim spaces from search query (thanks Christopher Wedgwood)
hash: document that Sum does not change state, fix crypto hashes
http: bug fixes, revision of Request/Response (thanks Petar Maymounkov)
math: more handling of IEEE 754 special cases (thanks Charles Dorian)
misc/dashboard: new build dashboard
net: allow UDP broadcast,
	use /etc/hosts to resolve names (thanks Yves Junqueira, Michael Hoisie)
netchan: beginnings of new package for connecting channels across a network
os: allow FQDN in Hostname test (thanks Icarus Sparry)
reflect: garbage collection bug in Call
runtime: demo of Go on raw (emulated) hw in runtime/pchw,
	performance fix on OS X
spec: clarify meaning of chan <- chan int,
	func() func() int is allowed now,
	define ... T (not yet implemented)
template: can use interface values
time: fix for +0000 time zone,
	more robust tick.Stop.
xgb: support for authenticated connections (thanks Firmansyah Adiputra)
xml: add Escape (thanks Stephen Weinberg)
</pre>

<h3 id="2010-01-13">2010-01-13</h3>

<pre>
This release is mainly bug fixes with a little new code.
There are no language changes.

build: $GOBIN should no longer be required in $PATH (thanks Devon H. O'Dell),
	new package target "make bench" to run benchmarks
8g: faster float -> uint64 conversion (thanks Evan Shaw)
5g, 6g, 8g:
	clean opnames.h to avoid stale errors (thanks Yongjian Xu),
	a handful of small compiler fixes
5g, 6g, 8g, 5l, 6l, 8l: ignore $GOARCH, which is implied by name of tool
6prof: support for writing input files for google-perftools's pprof
asn1: fix a few structure-handling bugs
cgo: many bug fixes (thanks Devon H. O'Dell)
codereview: repeated "hg mail" sends "please take another look"
gob: reserve ids for future expansion
godoc: distinguish HTML generation from plain text HTML escaping (thanks Roger Peppe)
gofmt: minor bug fixes, removed -oldprinter flag
http: add CanonicalPath (thanks Ivan Krasin),
	avoid header duplication in Response.Write,
	correctly escape/unescape URL sections
io: new interface ReadByter
json: better error, pointer handling in Marshal (thanks Ivan Krasin)
libmach: disassembly of FUCOMI, etc (thanks Evan Shaw)
math: special cases for most functions and 386 hardware Sqrt (thanks Charles Dorian)
misc/dashboard: beginning of a build dashboard at godashboard.appspot.com.
misc/emacs: handling of new semicolon rules (thanks Austin Clements),
	empty buffer bug fix (thanks Kevin Ballard)
misc/kate: highlighting improvements (tahnks Evan Shaw)
os/signal: add signal names: signal.SIGHUP, etc (thanks David Symonds)
runtime: preliminary Windows support (thanks Hector Chu),
	preemption polling to reduce garbage collector pauses
scanner: new lightweight scanner package
template: bug fix involving spaces before a delimited block
test/bench: updated timings
time: new Format, Parse functions
</pre>

<h3 id="2010-01-05">2010-01-05</h3>

<pre>
This release is mainly bug fixes.  There are no language changes.

6prof: now works on 386
8a, 8l: add FCOMI, FCOMIP, FUCOMI, and FUCOMIP (thanks Evan Shaw)
big: fix ProbablyPrime on small numbers
container/vector: faster []-based implementation (thanks Jan Mercl)
crypto/tls: extensions and Next Protocol Negotiation
gob: one encoding bug fix, one decoding bug fix
image/jpeg: support for RST markers
image/png: support for transparent paletted images
misc/xcode: improved support (thanks Ken Friedenbach)
net: return nil Conn on error from Dial (thanks Roger Peppe)
regexp: add Regexp.NumSubexp (thanks Peter Froehlich)
syscall: add Nanosleep on FreeBSD (thanks Devon H. O'Dell)
template: can use map in .repeated section

There is now a public road map, in the repository and online
at <a href="http://golang.org/doc/devel/roadmap.html">http://golang.org/doc/devel/roadmap.html</a>.
</pre>

<h3 id="2009-12-22">2009-12-22</h3>

<pre>
Since the last release there has been one large syntactic change to
the language, already discussed extensively on this list: semicolons
are now implied between statement-ending tokens and newline characters.
See http://groups.google.com/group/golang-nuts/t/5ee32b588d10f2e9 for
details.

By default, gofmt now parses and prints the new lighter weight syntax.
To convert programs written in the old syntax, you can use:

	gofmt -oldparser -w *.go

Since everything was being reformatted anyway, we took the opportunity to
change the way gofmt does alignment.  Now gofmt uses tabs at the start
of a line for basic code alignment, but it uses spaces for alignment of
interior columns.  Thus, in an editor with a fixed-width font, you can
choose your own tab size to change the indentation, and no matter what
tab size you choose, columns will be aligned properly.


In addition to the syntax and formatting changes, there have been many
smaller fixes and updates:

6g,8g,5g: many bug fixes, better registerization,
   build process fix involving mkbuiltin (thanks Yongjian Xu),
   method expressions for concrete types
8l: support for Windows PE files (thanks Hector Chu)
bytes: more efficient Buffer handling
bytes, strings: new function Fields (thanks Andrey Mirtchovski)
cgo: handling of enums (thanks Moriyoshi Koizumi),
    handling of structs with bit fields, multiple files (thanks Devon H. O'Dell),
    installation of .so to non-standard locations
crypto/sha256: new package for SHA 256 (thanks Andy Davis)
encoding/binary: support for slices of fixed-size values (thanks Maxim Ushakov)
exp/vector: experimental alternate vector representation (thanks Jan Mercl)
fmt: %p for chan, map, slice types
gob: a couple more bug fixes
http: support for basic authentication (thanks Ivan Krasin)
image/jpeg: basic JPEG decoder
math: correct handling of Inf and NaN in Pow (thanks Charles Dorian)
misc/bash: completion file for bash (thanks Alex Ray)
os/signal: support for handling Unix signals (thanks David Symonds)
rand: Zipf-distributed random values (thanks William Josephson)
syscall: correct error return bug on 32-bit machines (thanks Christopher Wedgwood)
syslog: new package for writing to Unix syslog daemon (thanks Yves Junqueira)
template: will automatically invoke niladic methods
time: new ISO8601 format generator (thanks Ben Olive)
xgb: converted generator to new syntax (thanks Tor Andersson)
xml: better mapping of tag names to Go identifiers (thanks Kei Son),
    better handling of unexpected EOF (thanks Arvindh Rajesh Tamilmani)
</pre>

<h3 id="2009-12-09">2009-12-09</h3>

<pre>
Since the last release there are two changes to the language: 

* new builtin copy(dst, src) copies n = min(len(dst), len(src)) 
  elements to dst from src and returns n.  It works correctly 
  even if dst and src overlap.  bytes.Copy is gone. 
  Convert your programs using: 
      gofmt -w -r 'bytes.Copy(d, s) -&gt; copy(d, s)' *.go 

* new syntax x[lo:] is shorthand for x[lo:len(x)]. 
  Convert your programs using: 
      gofmt -w -r 'a[b:len(a)] -&gt; a[b:]' *.go 

In addition, there have been many smaller fixes and updates: 

* 6g/8g/5g: many bug fixes 
* 8g: fix 386 floating point stack bug (thanks Charles Dorian) 
* all.bash: now works even when $GOROOT has spaces (thanks Sergio Luis O. B. Correia), 
    starting to make build work with mingw (thanks Hector Chu), 
    FreeBSD support (thanks Devon O'Dell) 
* big: much faster on 386. 
* bytes: new function IndexByte, implemented in assembly 
    new function Runes (thanks Peter Froehlich), 
    performance tuning in bytes.Buffer. 
* codereview: various bugs fixed 
* container/vector: New is gone; just declare a Vector instead. 
    call Resize to set len and cap. 
* cgo: many bug fixes (thanks Eden Li) 
* crypto: added MD4 (thanks Chris Lennert), 
    added XTEA (thanks Adrian O'Grady). 
* crypto/tls: basic client 
* exp/iterable: new functions (thanks Michael Elkins) 
* exp/nacl: native client tree builds again 
* fmt: preliminary performance tuning 
* go/ast: more powerful Visitor (thanks Roger Peppe) 
* gob: a few bug fixes 
* gofmt: better handling of standard input, error reporting (thanks Fazlul Shahriar) 
    new -r flag for rewriting programs 
* gotest: support for Benchmark functions (thanks Trevor Strohman) 
* io: ReadFile, WriteFile, ReadDir now in separate package io/ioutil. 
* json: new Marshal function (thanks Michael Hoisie), 
    better white space handling (thanks Andrew Skiba), 
    decoding into native data structures (thanks Sergey Gromov), 
    handling of nil interface values (thanks Ross Light). 
* math: correct handling of sin/cos of large angles 
* net: better handling of Close (thanks Devon O'Dell and Christopher Wedgwood) 
    support for UDP broadcast (thanks Jonathan Wills), 
    support for empty packets 
* rand: top-level functions now safe to call from multiple goroutines 
(thanks Roger Peppe). 
* regexp: a few easy optimizations 
* rpc: better error handling, a few bug fixes 
* runtime: better signal handling on OS X, malloc fixes, 
    global channel lock is gone. 
* sync: RWMutex now allows concurrent readers (thanks Péter Szabó) 
* template: can use maps as data (thanks James Meneghello) 
* unicode: updated to Unicode 5.2. 
* websocket: new package (thanks Fumitoshi Ukai) 
* xgb: preliminary X Go Bindings (thanks Tor Andersson) 
* xml: fixed crash (thanks Vish Subramanian) 
* misc: bbedit config (thanks Anthony Starks), 
    kate config (thanks Evan Shaw) 
</pre>