Upgrade to use go 1.20

[lasarojc]

As asked in #174, in general, what are our criteria for updating to support a new version of Go?

[thanethomson]

My recommendation is to always use the latest version on main the moment it comes out.

Then, for release branches, we can be more conservative. But given Go's support terms, we can only ever support using one version back.

[sergio-mena]

In abstract, I would tend to be more conservative overall. However, with the (über-strict IMO) policy of only supporting the last two versions of golang, I don't think we can afford to be that conservative.
So I support upgrading main to the latest version as soon as it is out.

[cason]

Yes, I don't think Golang gives us much choice here. We had 3 versions (1.18 - 1.20) in less than one year. We should hope this doesn't become the norm.

[thanethomson]

Yes, the longer we wait to update to the latest version of Go on main, the more likely our releases' minimum Go versions are going to end up being unsupported, potentially increasing the likelihood of issues for networks upgrading to new versions (i.e. being more conservative in this case potentially increases risk overall).

[lasarojc]

I also like the idea of keeping up with Go and giving the comments above we should move HEAD to Go 1.20. I guess the sooner the better, so people are well warned about it.

What about 0.37? Should we start coordinating with our customers to update to 1.20? Some of them are already there.

[thanethomson]

In general we should upgrade to the latest release of Go as soon as pragmatically feasible after it comes out to maximize the lifespan of a release using a single version of Go.

What would dramatically reduce any risks there is if we had some way of testing mixed networks of app chains (e.g. with Gaia) where some binaries are built using one version of Go and other are built using a different version. That's where the real risk comes in. Not during coordinated upgrades.

[cason]

An important point to consider is that go 1.20 is not available as a package in some important Linux distros:

• Debian offers 1.19, even for the for the unstable/sid suite: https://packages.debian.org/search?keywords=golang&searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all
• Ubuntu 22.04 and 22.10 offers 1.19, only the development lunar suite, which will become 23.04, offers 1.20: https://packages.ubuntu.com/search?keywords=golang&searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all

[thanethomson]

Does anyone exclusively use the standard versions of Go provided by specific distros? Personally, I either manually download and symlink the latest version of Go, or use Homebrew/Linuxbrew.

Some users only use the Docker images we build, and some will build their own Docker images using the Go 1.20 base images.

[sergio-mena]

As an OSX prisoner, I'm a fervent user of Homebrew :-). A distro not having a version of go available (e.g., via apt) is a hindrance. IMO, this should not prevail over the need to keep go as up to date as possible, as that is a risk.

[cason]

I would say that Golang not supporting a major version for one year is the real issue here. I would not blame the Linux distributions for that.

[lasarojc]

PR #419 updated go on the 0.37 branch as well, so closing this.
We shall meet again, once go 1.21 is released!