x/sys/unix: broken on Go 1.6

[hiranya911]

Please answer these questions before submitting your issue. Thanks!

What version of Go are you using (go version)?

go version go1.6.4 linux/amd64

What operating system and processor architecture are you using (go env)?

GOARCH="amd64"
GOBIN=""
GOEXE=""
GOHOSTARCH="amd64"
GOHOSTOS="linux"
GOOS="linux"
GOPATH="/home/travis/gopath"
GORACE=""
GOROOT="/home/travis/.gimme/versions/go1.6.4.linux.amd64"
GOTOOLDIR="/home/travis/.gimme/versions/go1.6.4.linux.amd64/pkg/tool/linux_amd64"
GO15VENDOREXPERIMENT="1"
CC="gcc"
GOGCCFLAGS="-fPIC -m64 -pthread -fmessage-length=0"
CXX="g++"
CGO_ENABLED="1"

What did you do?

Some of our CI builds on Go 1.6 suddenly started failing (builds are successful on other Go version)

google.golang.org/grpc/balancer
google.golang.org/grpc/balancer/base
google.golang.org/grpc/balancer/roundrobin
google.golang.org/grpc/codes
google.golang.org/grpc/encoding
google.golang.org/grpc/encoding/proto
google.golang.org/grpc/internal
google.golang.org/grpc/internal/grpcrand
google.golang.org/grpc/internal/backoff
golang.org/x/sys/unix
# golang.org/x/sys/unix
../../golang.org/x/sys/unix/ioctl.go:18: undefined: runtime.KeepAlive
../../golang.org/x/sys/unix/ioctl.go:28: undefined: runtime.KeepAlive
google.golang.org/grpc/internal/envconfig
github.com/golang/protobuf/ptypes/any
google.golang.org/genproto/googleapis/rpc/status
google.golang.org/grpc/keepalive
google.golang.org/grpc/metadata
google.golang.org/grpc/peer
google.golang.org/grpc/stats
github.com/golang/protobuf/ptypes/duration
github.com/golang/protobuf/ptypes/timestamp
github.com/golang/protobuf/ptypes
google.golang.org/grpc/status
google.golang.org/grpc/tap
google.golang.org/grpc/naming
google.golang.org/grpc/resolver/dns
google.golang.org/grpc/resolver/passthrough
google.golang.org/api/iterator
golang.org/x/net/context/ctxhttp
golang.org/x/oauth2/jws
golang.org/x/oauth2/internal
cloud.google.com/go/compute/metadata
google.golang.org/api/googleapi/transport
golang.org/x/oauth2
github.com/golang/protobuf/ptypes/empty
github.com/golang/protobuf/ptypes/struct
github.com/golang/protobuf/ptypes/wrappers
golang.org/x/oauth2/jwt
github.com/golang/protobuf/protoc-gen-go/descriptor
golang.org/x/oauth2/google
google.golang.org/genproto/googleapis/api/annotations
google.golang.org/grpc/credentials/oauth
google.golang.org/genproto/googleapis/type/latlng
cloud.google.com/go/internal/atomiccache
cloud.google.com/go/internal/btree
cloud.google.com/go/internal/fields
google.golang.org/api/googleapi/internal/uritemplates
cloud.google.com/go/internal/optional
cloud.google.com/go/internal/trace
google.golang.org/api/googleapi
google.golang.org/api/gensupport
google.golang.org/api/identitytoolkit/v3
google.golang.org/api/storage/v1
The command "go get -t -v $(go list ./... | grep -v integration)" failed and exited with 2 during .

Issue seems to have been caused by golang/sys@e072cad

[hiranya911]

It seems runtime.KeepAlive is only present on Go 1.7 and above.

[bradfitz]

Sorry, Go 1.6 is no longer supported.

If you were using Go 1.6 for App Engine, note that GAE standard supports Go 1.9 (by default) now.

/cc @jba @zombiezen @ianlancetaylor

[hiranya911]

What about other GCP client libraries? They were still building for golang 1.6 last time I checked: https://github.com/GoogleCloudPlatform/google-cloud-go/blob/master/.travis.yml

[ianlancetaylor]

Will no one rid of us of this meddlesome 1.6 release?

[hiranya911]

Btw we are observing this break in the Firebase Go library. If Cloud gophers have decided to drop golang 1.6, we can get on board with that and drop 1.6 support as well.

@jba, @broady please advise.

[bradfitz]

Will no one rid of us of this meddlesome 1.6 release?

I'm trying, Henry. My understanding was that GAE Standard was the last holdout and with it supporting Go 1.9 now we could move forward. I'd love to get confirmation on that.

[jba]

Not quite, Brad. There is a difference between supporting 1.9 and dropping support for 1.6.

Please put this change behind a build tag.

[jba]

Sorry, let me be less snarky.

Although 1.9 may be the GAE default, it is still possible to pin to other versions. We know that several projects pin to 1.6. Until an official deprecation policy is announced and implemented, we are obligated to support 1.6.

[agnivade]

Until an official deprecation policy is announced and implemented,

It is already there I believe.

Each major Go release is supported until there are two newer major releases

https://golang.org/doc/devel/release.html#policy. So "officially" 1.6 is no longer supported.

[jba]

Sorry, @agnivade, I was referring to App Engine, not Go.

[bradfitz]

@jba, do we have that documented somewhere?

Let's agree on something and write something down.

We can't have some invisible policy that non-Google Go contributors don't know about.

Please document somewhere what's expected of the Go App Engine libraries and what's expected of the Go libraries (and which). And for which environments. (Standard? Flex? Go 1.6 only? which packages?)

Also, we have no build & test infrastructure setup for older releases anymore.

You never replied to #26302 either, which is about removing Go 1.8 and older support in x/net/http2, which has become a mess of +build tags and files:

https://github.com/golang/net/tree/master/http2

... such messes hinder development. It's just not sustainable to keep supporting Go 1.6.

Perhaps y'all need to vendor old copies of certain golang.org/x/* packages to keep App Engine libraries working, if that's what you've promised.

But I'm not sure what the constraints are. Please document it somewhere.

Once we see & agree upon a policy, then we can move forward with this bug.