Stop picking my Go version for me

Or, I have only tested my library on this version, and nothing lower.

> Even in the event that your packages code is only correct with a specific patch release, I still think its not always right to put that version in the go directive unless it cannot be compiled with any other version.

This just makes me shiver. Imagine releasing a library with a version number slightly lower because of this post, it compiles, but there is a bug that brings down production...

Thanks but not thanks.

>My package really does depend on the latest patch release!

> Even in the event that your packages code is only correct with a specific patch release, I still think its wrong to put that version in the go directive unless it cannot be compiled with any other version.

I'm not a go user, but this strikes me as an over-reaction. If your code is only correct with a specific patch release, then it really is your business to make that so. If someone downstream wants to use library_method_broadly_correct and not library_method_correct_only_with_latest, then downstream should patch your source to allow them to do something unsupported. That becomes their problem. If this is likely to be a significant problem that will affect many users, then this is a codesmell warning you that you've probably got two libraries which you're just jumbling together into one: the solution isn't to falsely gate a safe function behind a high dependency version, nor to falsely release a function to people who can't use it safely, but to publish each with its own requirements expressly stated.

How your go.mod should look:

    go 1.24.0

    toolchain go1.25.7

go get can manage this for you - https://go.dev/doc/toolchain#get

I used to see supporting multiple versions of Python as an expensive chore... and then I learned how to use the GitHub Actions matrix feature and supporting multiple versions is suddenly easy - my test suites are comprehensive enough that if they pass I'm confident it will work on that version.

I expect this should work equally well for Go.

The author fails to mention any of the negative effects they experience due to this go version selection. They say that the effect is "viral" but don't give any concrete examples of why it's a bad thing to keep your toolchain up to date

In other ecosystems, I could see how this could be a problem, but I don’t think I’ve ever had a problem with a Go upgrade.

What’re the actual, practical results of a package pushing you towards a higher go version that you wouldn’t otherwise have adopted right away? Why is this actually important to avoid beyond “don’t tell me what to do”?

This just got me. Datadog decided that they only support the current and last major versions of Go. So, 1.26 and 1.25. But in my cause we're still on 1.24.13 which was released by the Go team less than two months ago.

Datadog won't be getting a renewal from us.

> The version is the minimum version your project can be compiled with.

Sure. But guess what, virtually nobody is going to find out what that "minimum version" is, and your blog post is not going to change that.

Just install the latest toolchain.

> Its not your responsibility to ensure transitive importers of your library are on the latest version of Go. Don't make that decision for them.

and yet the Go maintainers did not include or build (in the future) a tool that determined the minimum version of Go that your application can be compiled in.

Same situation in Rust crates, AIUI.

Weird that this needs to be said. I’m not familiar with the Go ecosystem, but there is usually a natural incentive for library developers to reach more people, which means you’d want to support the oldest feasible version. If you don’t do that then someone will develop a better library which does support an older version. Is that not happening here?

I always stay up with the latest go releases and if I am touching one of my packages that are set to lower in go.mod, I update it. It is an easy maintenance task to make sure I am keeping up with the latest standard library and tooling changes and improvements.

>It is not the version you use to compile your project

But it is the version which they support. Pushing it back to an older version may result in bad behavior even if it does compile.