The latest Go release, version 1.17, arrives six months after Go 1.16. Most of its changes are in the implementation of the toolchain, runtime, and libraries. As always, the release maintains the Go 1 promise of compatibility. We expect almost all Go programs to continue to compile and run as before.
Go 1.17 includes three small enhancements to the language.
s of
type []T may now be converted to array pointer type
*[N]T. If a is the result of such a
conversion, then corresponding indices that are in range refer to
the same underlying elements: &a[i] == &s[i]
for 0 <= i < N. The conversion panics if
len(s) is less than N.
unsafe.Add:
unsafe.Add(ptr, len) adds len
to ptr and returns the updated pointer
unsafe.Pointer(uintptr(ptr) + uintptr(len)).
unsafe.Slice:
For expression ptr of type *T,
unsafe.Slice(ptr, len) returns a slice of
type []T whose underlying array starts
at ptr and whose length and capacity
are len.
The package unsafe enhancements were added to simplify writing code that conforms
to unsafe.Pointer's safety
rules, but the rules remain unchanged. In particular, existing
programs that correctly use unsafe.Pointer remain
valid, and new programs must still follow the rules when
using unsafe.Add or unsafe.Slice.
Note that the new conversion from slice to array pointer is the first case in which a type conversion can panic at run time. Analysis tools that assume type conversions can never panic should be updated to consider this possibility.
As announced in the Go 1.16 release notes, Go 1.17 requires macOS 10.13 High Sierra or later; support for previous versions has been discontinued.
Go 1.17 adds support of 64-bit ARM architecture on Windows (the
windows/arm64 port). This port supports cgo.
The 64-bit MIPS architecture on OpenBSD (the openbsd/mips64
port) now supports cgo.
In Go 1.16, on the 64-bit x86 and 64-bit ARM architectures on
OpenBSD (the openbsd/amd64 and openbsd/arm64
ports) system calls are made through libc, instead
of directly using machine instructions. In Go 1.17, this is also
done on the 32-bit x86 and 32-bit ARM architectures on OpenBSD
(the openbsd/386 and openbsd/arm ports).
This ensures compatibility with OpenBSD 6.9 onwards, which require
system calls to be made through libc for non-static
Go binaries.
Go programs now maintain stack frame pointers on the 64-bit ARM architecture on all operating systems. Previously it maintained stack frame pointers only on Linux, macOS, and iOS.
The main Go compiler does not yet support the LoongArch
architecture, but we've reserved the GOARCH value
"loong64".
This means that Go files named *_loong64.go will now
be ignored by Go
tools except when that GOARCH value is being used.
go 1.17 modules
If a module specifies go 1.17 or higher, the module
graph includes only the immediate dependencies of
other go 1.17 modules, not their full transitive
dependencies. (See Module graph pruning
for more detail.)
For the go command to correctly resolve transitive imports using
the pruned module graph, the go.mod file for each module needs to
include more detail about the transitive dependencies relevant to that module.
If a module specifies go 1.17 or higher in its
go.mod file, its go.mod file now contains an
explicit require
directive for every module that provides a transitively-imported package.
(In previous versions, the go.mod file typically only included
explicit requirements for directly-imported packages.)
Since the expanded go.mod file needed for module graph pruning
includes all of the dependencies needed to load the imports of any package in
the main module, if the main module specifies
go 1.17 or higher the go tool no longer
reads (or even downloads) go.mod files for dependencies if they
are not needed in order to complete the requested command.
(See Lazy loading.)
Because the number of explicit requirements may be substantially larger in an
expanded Go 1.17 go.mod file, the newly-added requirements
on indirect dependencies in a go 1.17
module are maintained in a separate require block from the block
containing direct dependencies.
To facilitate the upgrade to Go 1.17 pruned module graphs, the
go mod tidy
subcommand now supports a -go flag to set or change
the go version in the go.mod file. To convert
the go.mod file for an existing module to Go 1.17 without
changing the selected versions of its dependencies, run:
go mod tidy -go=1.17
By default, go mod tidy verifies that
the selected versions of dependencies relevant to the main module are the same
versions that would be used by the prior Go release (Go 1.16 for a module that
specifies go 1.17), and preserves
the go.sum entries needed by that release even for dependencies
that are not normally needed by other commands.
The -compat flag allows that version to be overridden to support
older (or only newer) versions, up to the version specified by
the go directive in the go.mod file. To tidy
a go 1.17 module for Go 1.17 only, without saving
checksums for (or checking for consistency with) Go 1.16:
go mod tidy -compat=1.17
Note that even if the main module is tidied with -compat=1.17,
users who require the module from a
go 1.16 or earlier module will still be able to
use it, provided that the packages use only compatible language and library
features.
The go mod graph
subcommand also supports the -go flag, which causes it to report
the graph as seen by the indicated Go version, showing dependencies that may
otherwise be pruned out.
Module authors may deprecate a module by adding a
// Deprecated:
comment to go.mod, then tagging a new version.
go get now prints a warning if a module needed to
build packages named on the command line is deprecated. go
list -m -u prints deprecations for all
dependencies (use -f or -json to show the full
message). The go command considers different major versions to
be distinct modules, so this mechanism may be used, for example, to provide
users with migration instructions for a new major version.
go get
The go get -insecure flag is
deprecated and has been removed. To permit the use of insecure schemes
when fetching dependencies, please use the GOINSECURE
environment variable. The -insecure flag also bypassed module
sum validation, use GOPRIVATE or GONOSUMDB if
you need that functionality. See go help
environment for details.
go get prints a deprecation warning when installing
commands outside the main module (without the -d flag).
go install cmd@version should be used
instead to install a command at a specific version, using a suffix like
@latest or @v1.2.3. In Go 1.18, the -d
flag will always be enabled, and go get will only
be used to change dependencies in go.mod.
go.mod files missing go directives
If the main module's go.mod file does not contain
a go directive and
the go command cannot update the go.mod file, the
go command now assumes go 1.11 instead of the
current release. (go mod init has added
go directives automatically since
Go 1.12.)
If a module dependency lacks an explicit go.mod file, or
its go.mod file does not contain
a go directive,
the go command now assumes go 1.16 for that
dependency instead of the current release. (Dependencies developed in GOPATH
mode may lack a go.mod file, and
the vendor/modules.txt has to date never recorded
the go versions indicated by dependencies' go.mod
files.)
vendor contents
If the main module specifies go 1.17 or higher,
go mod vendor
now annotates
vendor/modules.txt with the go version indicated by
each vendored module in its own go.mod file. The annotated
version is used when building the module's packages from vendored source code.
If the main module specifies go 1.17 or higher,
go mod vendor now omits go.mod
and go.sum files for vendored dependencies, which can otherwise
interfere with the ability of the go command to identify the correct
module root when invoked within the vendor tree.
The go command by default now suppresses SSH password prompts and
Git Credential Manager prompts when fetching Git repositories using SSH, as it
already did previously for other Git password prompts. Users authenticating to
private Git repos with password-protected SSH may configure
an ssh-agent to enable the go command to use
password-protected SSH keys.
go mod download
When go mod download is invoked without
arguments, it will no longer save sums for downloaded module content to
go.sum. It may still make changes to go.mod and
go.sum needed to load the build list. This is the same as the
behavior in Go 1.15. To save sums for all modules, use go
mod download all.
//go:build lines
The go command now understands //go:build lines
and prefers them over // +build lines. The new syntax uses
boolean expressions, just like Go, and should be less error-prone.
As of this release, the new syntax is fully supported, and all Go files
should be updated to have both forms with the same meaning. To aid in
migration, gofmt now automatically
synchronizes the two forms. For more details on the syntax and migration plan,
see
https://golang.org/design/draft-gobuild.
go run
go run now accepts arguments with version suffixes
(for example, go run
example.com/cmd@v1.0.0). This causes go
run to build and run packages in module-aware mode, ignoring the
go.mod file in the current directory or any parent directory, if
there is one. This is useful for running executables without installing them or
without changing dependencies of the current module.
gofmt (and go fmt) now synchronizes
//go:build lines with // +build lines. If a file
only has // +build lines, they will be moved to the appropriate
location in the file, and matching //go:build lines will be
added. Otherwise, // +build lines will be overwritten based on
any existing //go:build lines. For more information, see
https://golang.org/design/draft-gobuild.
//go:build and // +build lines
The vet tool now verifies that //go:build and
// +build lines are in the correct part of the file and
synchronized with each other. If they aren't,
gofmt can be used to fix them. For more
information, see
https://golang.org/design/draft-gobuild.
signal.Notify on unbuffered channels
The vet tool now warns about calls to signal.Notify
with incoming signals being sent to an unbuffered channel. Using an unbuffered channel
risks missing signals sent on them as signal.Notify does not block when
sending to a channel. For example:
c := make(chan os.Signal) // signals are sent on c before the channel is read from. // This signal may be dropped as c is unbuffered. signal.Notify(c, os.Interrupt)
Users of signal.Notify should use channels with sufficient buffer space to keep up with the
expected signal rate.
The vet tool now warns about methods named As, Is or Unwrap
on types implementing the error interface that have a different signature than the
one expected by the errors package. The errors.{As,Is,Unwrap} functions
expect such methods to implement either Is(error) bool,
As(interface{}) bool, or Unwrap() error
respectively. The functions errors.{As,Is,Unwrap} will ignore methods with the same
names but a different signature. For example:
type MyError struct { hint string }
func (m MyError) Error() string { ... } // MyError implements error.
func (MyError) Is(target interface{}) bool { ... } // target is interface{} instead of error.
func Foo() bool {
x, y := MyError{"A"}, MyError{"B"}
return errors.Is(x, y) // returns false as x != y and MyError does not have an `Is(error) bool` function.
}
The cover tool now uses an optimized parser
from golang.org/x/tools/cover, which may be noticeably faster
when parsing large coverage profiles.
Go 1.17 implements a new way of passing function arguments and results using
registers instead of the stack.
Benchmarks for a representative set of Go packages and programs show
performance improvements of about 5%, and a typical reduction in
binary size of about 2%.
This is currently enabled for Linux, macOS, and Windows on the
64-bit x86 architecture (the linux/amd64,
darwin/amd64, and windows/amd64 ports).
This change does not affect the functionality of any safe Go code
and is designed to have no impact on most assembly code.
It may affect code that violates
the unsafe.Pointer
rules when accessing function arguments, or that depends on
undocumented behavior involving comparing function code pointers.
To maintain compatibility with existing assembly functions, the
compiler generates adapter functions that convert between the new
register-based calling convention and the previous stack-based
calling convention.
These adapters are typically invisible to users, except that taking
the address of a Go function in assembly code or taking the address
of an assembly function in Go code
using reflect.ValueOf(fn).Pointer()
or unsafe.Pointer will now return the address of the
adapter.
Code that depends on the value of these code pointers may no longer
behave as expected.
Adapters also may cause a very small performance overhead in two
cases: calling an assembly function indirectly from Go via
a func value, and calling Go functions from assembly.
The format of stack traces from the runtime (printed when an uncaught panic
occurs, or when runtime.Stack is called) is improved. Previously,
the function arguments were printed as hexadecimal words based on the memory
layout. Now each argument in the source code is printed separately, separated
by commas. Aggregate-typed (struct, array, string, slice, interface, and complex)
arguments are delimited by curly braces. A caveat is that the value of an
argument that only lives in a register and is not stored to memory may be
inaccurate. Function return values (which were usually inaccurate) are no longer
printed.
Functions containing closures can now be inlined.
One effect of this change is that a function with a closure may
produce a distinct closure code pointer for each place that the
function is inlined.
Go function values are not directly comparable, but this change
could reveal bugs in code that uses reflect
or unsafe.Pointer to bypass this language restriction
and compare functions by code pointer.
When the linker uses external linking mode, which is the default
when linking a program that uses cgo, and the linker is invoked
with a -I option, the option will now be passed to the
external linker as a -Wl,--dynamic-linker option.
The runtime/cgo package now provides a new facility that allows to turn any Go values to a safe representation that can be used to pass values between C and Go safely. See runtime/cgo.Handle for more information.
The net/url and net/http packages used to accept
";" (semicolon) as a setting separator in URL queries, in
addition to "&" (ampersand). Now, settings with non-percent-encoded
semicolons are rejected and net/http servers will log a warning to
Server.ErrorLog
when encountering one in a request URL.
For example, before Go 1.17 the Query
method of the URL example?a=1;b=2&c=3 would have returned
map[a:[1] b:[2] c:[3]], while now it returns map[c:[3]].
When encountering such a query string,
URL.Query
and
Request.FormValue
ignore any settings that contain a semicolon,
ParseQuery
returns the remaining settings and an error, and
Request.ParseForm
and
Request.ParseMultipartForm
return an error but still set Request fields based on the
remaining settings.
net/http users can restore the original behavior by using the new
AllowQuerySemicolons
handler wrapper. This will also suppress the ErrorLog warning.
Note that accepting semicolons as query separators can lead to security issues
if different systems interpret cache keys differently.
See issue 25192 for more information.
When Config.NextProtos
is set, servers now enforce that there is an overlap between the configured
protocols and the ALPN protocols advertised by the client, if any. If there is
no mutually supported protocol, the connection is closed with the
no_application_protocol alert, as required by RFC 7301. This
helps mitigate the ALPACA cross-protocol attack.
As an exception, when the value "h2" is included in the server's
Config.NextProtos, HTTP/1.1 clients will be allowed to connect as
if they didn't support ALPN.
See issue 46310 for more information.
As always, there are various minor changes and updates to the library, made with the Go 1 promise of compatibility in mind.
The new methods File.OpenRaw, Writer.CreateRaw, Writer.Copy provide support for cases where performance is a primary concern.
The Writer.WriteRune method
now writes the replacement character U+FFFD for negative rune values,
as it does for other invalid runes.
The Buffer.WriteRune method
now writes the replacement character U+FFFD for negative rune values,
as it does for other invalid runes.
The NewReader
function is guaranteed to return a value of the new
type Reader,
and similarly NewWriter
is guaranteed to return a value of the new
type Writer.
These new types both implement a Reset method
(Reader.Reset,
Writer.Reset)
that allows reuse of the Reader or Writer.
The crypto/ed25519 package has been rewritten, and all
operations are now approximately twice as fast on amd64 and arm64.
The observable behavior has not otherwise changed.
CurveParams
methods now automatically invoke faster and safer dedicated
implementations for known curves (P-224, P-256, and P-521) when
available. Note that this is a best-effort approach and applications
should avoid using the generic, not constant-time CurveParams
methods and instead use dedicated
Curve implementations
such as P256.
The P521 curve
implementation has been rewritten using code generated by the
fiat-crypto project,
which is based on a formally-verified model of the arithmetic
operations. It is now constant-time and three times faster on amd64 and
arm64. The observable behavior has not otherwise changed.
The crypto/rand package now uses the getentropy
syscall on macOS and the getrandom syscall on Solaris,
Illumos, and DragonFlyBSD.
The new Conn.HandshakeContext
method allows the user to control cancellation of an in-progress TLS
handshake. The provided context is accessible from various callbacks through the new
ClientHelloInfo.Context and
CertificateRequestInfo.Context
methods. Canceling the context after the handshake has finished has no effect.
Cipher suite ordering is now handled entirely by the
crypto/tls package. Currently, cipher suites are sorted based
on their security, performance, and hardware support taking into account
both the local and peer's hardware. The order of the
Config.CipherSuites
field is now ignored, as well as the
Config.PreferServerCipherSuites
field. Note that Config.CipherSuites still allows
applications to choose what TLS 1.0–1.2 cipher suites to enable.
The 3DES cipher suites have been moved to
InsecureCipherSuites
due to fundamental block size-related
weakness. They are still enabled by default but only as a last resort,
thanks to the cipher suite ordering change above.
Beginning in the next release, Go 1.18, the
Config.MinVersion
for crypto/tls clients will default to TLS 1.2, disabling TLS 1.0
and TLS 1.1 by default. Applications will be able to override the change by
explicitly setting Config.MinVersion.
This will not affect crypto/tls servers.
CreateCertificate
now returns an error if the provided private key doesn't match the
parent's public key, if any. The resulting certificate would have failed
to verify.
The temporary GODEBUG=x509ignoreCN=0 flag has been removed.
ParseCertificate
has been rewritten, and now consumes ~70% fewer resources. The observable
behavior has not otherwise changed, except for error messages.
On BSD systems, /etc/ssl/certs is now searched for trusted
roots. This adds support for the new system trusted certificate store in
FreeBSD 12.2+.
Beginning in the next release, Go 1.18, crypto/x509 will
reject certificates signed with the SHA-1 hash function. This doesn't
apply to self-signed root certificates. Practical attacks against SHA-1
have been demonstrated in 2017 and publicly
trusted Certificate Authorities have not issued SHA-1 certificates since 2015.
The DB.Close method now closes
the connector field if the type in this field implements the
io.Closer interface.
The new
NullInt16
and
NullByte
structs represent the int16 and byte values that may be null. These can be used as
destinations of the Scan method,
similar to NullString.
The SHT_MIPS_ABIFLAGS
constant has been added.
binary.Uvarint will stop reading after 10 bytes to avoid
wasted computations. If more than 10 bytes are needed, the byte count returned is -11.
Previous Go versions could return larger negative counts when reading incorrectly encoded varints.
The new
Reader.FieldPos
method returns the line and column corresponding to the start of
a given field in the record most recently returned by
Read.
When a comment appears within a
Directive, it is now replaced
with a single space instead of being completely elided.
Invalid element or attribute names with leading, trailing, or multiple
colons are now stored unmodified into the
Name.Local field.
Flag declarations now panic if an invalid name is specified.
The new
Context.ToolTags
field holds the build tags appropriate to the current Go
toolchain configuration.
The Source and
Node functions now
synchronize //go:build lines with // +build
lines. If a file only has // +build lines, they will be
moved to the appropriate location in the file, and matching
//go:build lines will be added. Otherwise,
// +build lines will be overwritten based on any existing
//go:build lines. For more information, see
https://golang.org/design/draft-gobuild.
The new SkipObjectResolution
Mode value instructs the parser not to resolve identifiers to
their declaration. This may improve parsing speed.
The concrete image types (RGBA, Gray16 and so on)
now implement a new RGBA64Image
interface. The concrete types that previously implemented
draw.Image now also implement
draw.RGBA64Image, a
new interface in the image/draw package.
The new FileInfoToDirEntry function converts a FileInfo to a DirEntry.
The math package now defines three more constants: MaxUint, MaxInt and MinInt.
For 32-bit systems their values are 2^32 - 1, 2^31 - 1 and -2^31, respectively.
For 64-bit systems their values are 2^64 - 1, 2^63 - 1 and -2^63, respectively.
On Unix systems, the table of MIME types is now read from the local system's Shared MIME-info Database when available.
Part.FileName
now applies
filepath.Base to the
return value. This mitigates potential path traversal vulnerabilities in
applications that accept multipart messages, such as net/http
servers that call
Request.FormFile.
The new method IP.IsPrivate reports whether an address is
a private IPv4 address according to RFC 1918
or a local IPv6 address according RFC 4193.
The Go DNS resolver now only sends one DNS query when resolving an address for an IPv4-only or IPv6-only network, rather than querying for both address families.
The ErrClosed sentinel error and
ParseError error type now implement
the net.Error interface.
The ParseIP and ParseCIDR
functions now reject IPv4 addresses which contain decimal components with leading zeros.
These components were always interpreted as decimal, but some operating systems treat them as octal.
This mismatch could hypothetically lead to security issues if a Go application was used to validate IP addresses
which were then used in their original form with non-Go applications which interpreted components as octal. Generally,
it is advisable to always re-encode values after validation, which avoids this class of parser misalignment issues.
The net/http package now uses the new
(*tls.Conn).HandshakeContext
with the Request context
when performing TLS handshakes in the client or server.
Setting the Server
ReadTimeout or WriteTimeout fields to a negative value now indicates no timeout
rather than an immediate timeout.
The ReadRequest function
now returns an error when the request has multiple Host headers.
When producing a redirect to the cleaned version of a URL,
ServeMux now always
uses relative URLs in the Location header. Previously it
would echo the full URL of the request, which could lead to unintended
redirects if the client could be made to send an absolute request URL.
When interpreting certain HTTP headers handled by net/http,
non-ASCII characters are now ignored or rejected.
If
Request.ParseForm
returns an error when called by
Request.ParseMultipartForm,
the latter now continues populating
Request.MultipartForm
before returning it.
ResponseRecorder.WriteHeader
now panics when the provided code is not a valid three-digit HTTP status code.
This matches the behavior of ResponseWriter
implementations in the net/http package.
The new method Values.Has
reports whether a query parameter is set.
The File.WriteString method
has been optimized to not make a copy of the input string.
The new
Value.CanConvert
method reports whether a value can be converted to a type.
This may be used to avoid a panic when converting a slice to an
array pointer type if the slice is too short.
Previously it was sufficient to use
Type.ConvertibleTo
for this, but the newly permitted conversion from slice to array
pointer type can panic even if the types are convertible.
The new
StructField.IsExported
and
Method.IsExported
methods report whether a struct field or type method is exported.
They provide a more readable alternative to checking whether PkgPath
is empty.
The new VisibleFields function
returns all the visible fields in a struct type, including fields inside anonymous struct members.
The ArrayOf function now panics when
called with a negative length.
Checking the Type.ConvertibleTo method
is no longer sufficient to guarantee that a call to
Value.Convert will not panic.
It may panic when converting `[]T` to `*[N]T` if the slice's length is less than N.
See the language changes section above.
New metrics were added that track total bytes and objects allocated and freed. A new metric tracking the distribution of goroutine scheduling latencies was also added.
Block profiles are no longer biased to favor infrequent long events over frequent short events.
The strconv package now uses Ulf Adams's Ryū algorithm for formatting floating-point numbers.
This algorithm improves performance on most inputs and is more than 99% faster on worst-case inputs.
The new QuotedPrefix function
returns the quoted string (as understood by
Unquote)
at the start of input.
The Builder.WriteRune method
now writes the replacement character U+FFFD for negative rune values,
as it does for other invalid runes.
atomic.Value now has Swap and
CompareAndSwap methods that provide
additional atomic operations.
The GetQueuedCompletionStatus and
PostQueuedCompletionStatus
functions are now deprecated. These functions have incorrect signatures and are superseded by
equivalents in the golang.org/x/sys/windows package.
On Unix-like systems, the process group of a child process is now set with signals blocked.
This avoids sending a SIGTTOU to the child when the parent is in a background process group.
The Windows version of
SysProcAttr
has two new fields. AdditionalInheritedHandles is
a list of additional handles to be inherited by the new child
process. ParentProcess permits specifying the
parent process of the new process.
The constant MSG_CMSG_CLOEXEC is now defined on
DragonFly and all OpenBSD systems (it was already defined on
some OpenBSD systems and all FreeBSD, NetBSD, and Linux systems).
The constants SYS_WAIT6 and WEXITED
are now defined on NetBSD systems (SYS_WAIT6 was
already defined on DragonFly and FreeBSD systems;
WEXITED was already defined on Darwin, DragonFly,
FreeBSD, Linux, and Solaris systems).
Added a new testing flag -shuffle which controls the execution order of tests and benchmarks.
The new
T.Setenv
and B.Setenv
methods support setting an environment variable for the duration
of the test or benchmark.
The new SkipFuncCheck Mode
value changes the template parser to not verify that functions are defined.
The Time type now has a
GoString method that
will return a more useful value for times when printed with the
%#v format specifier in the fmt package.
The new Time.IsDST method can be used to check whether the time
is in Daylight Savings Time in its configured location.
The new Time.UnixMilli and
Time.UnixMicro
methods return the number of milliseconds and microseconds elapsed since
January 1, 1970 UTC respectively.
The new UnixMilli and
UnixMicro functions
return the local Time corresponding to the given Unix time.
The package now accepts comma "," as a separator for fractional seconds when parsing and formatting time. For example, the following time layouts are now accepted:
The new constant Layout
defines the reference time.