proposal: runtime: deprecate GOROOT() function #51473

rittneje · 2022-03-04T06:19:11Z

The runtime.GOROOT() function is currently implemented as follows:

If the GOROOT environment variable is set, return its value.
Else, return the value that was burned into the binary at compile time.

Unfortunately, this implementation cannot be relied upon to have any semantic meaning in general.

If the intent is to know what GOROOT the binary was compiled with, then consulting the GOROOT environment variable is wrong. Instead, the burned in value should be added to debug.BuildInfo.

If the intent is to know the GOROOT on the current machine, then consulting the burned in value is wrong, as it cannot handle the following (non-exhaustive) scenarios:

The binary may have been compiled on another machine, with a totally irrelevant GOROOT.
The go installation may have been moved since the binary was compiled.
The PATH environment variable may have changed since the binary was compiled.
The current machine might not even have a go installation.

Instead, the go env GOROOT command should be used. In particular, this change needs to be made for go/build.Default to function properly in all cases.

The text was updated successfully, but these errors were encountered:

mvdan · 2022-03-04T08:53:17Z

I think this is an interesting proposal, and I agree with the current confusion causing problems at times.

I assume that, if a program wants to try both approaches, they could have code that first tries one approach (like go env GOROOT), and then falls back to the other (like debug.BuildInfo).

mvdan · 2022-03-04T09:06:24Z

Instead, the go env GOROOT command should be used. In particular, this change needs to be made for go/build.Default to function properly in all cases.

I fully agree with your suggestion to use go env GOROOT, but I'm worried about changing go/build.Default.GOROOT. Note that Default is filled at init time, so it has a noticeable flat cost added to any program that ends up importing the package. Most of that cost currently comes from many calls to os.Getenv; adding an execution of go env would make it significantly slower, making many Go programs take a few milliseconds longer to start.

So when it comes to go/build, I think we should either keep it as-is with a warning in its documentation, or fully deprecate the Context.GOROOT field, instead pointing people to better alternatives like go env GOROOT to just query that one field, or to https://pkg.go.dev/golang.org/x/tools/go/packages for a whole-sale replacement of the Context.Import API.

rittneje · 2022-03-04T13:15:06Z

I fully agree with your suggestion to use go env GOROOT, but I'm worried about changing go/build.Default.GOROOT. Note that Default is filled at init time, so it has a noticeable flat cost added to any program that ends up importing the package

One possible solution would be to add a private flag to go/build.Context, such as isDefault bool. If true, then it won't set any environment variables when calling go list, since at best this accomplishes nothing, and at worst causes bugs.

go/src/go/build/build.go

Lines 1182 to 1188 in 81767e2

    
           cmd.Env = append(os.Environ(), 
        
           	"GOOS="+ctxt.GOOS, 
        
           	"GOARCH="+ctxt.GOARCH, 
        
           	"GOROOT="+ctxt.GOROOT, 
        
           	"GOPATH="+ctxt.GOPATH, 
        
           	"CGO_ENABLED="+cgo, 
        
           )

mvdan · 2022-03-04T13:19:35Z

Would that help with the added init cost, though, if its init func may still call go list?

rittneje · 2022-03-04T13:34:50Z

@mvdan I'm not suggesting that the init func for go/build call go list. I'm saying that when go/build calls go list within importGo (which already happens today), it should not attempt to set any of the environment variables in the case of build.Default.

Alternatively, at the top of importGo, it should call go env GOROOT rather than relying on the (possibly broken) value of build.Default.GOROOT.

mvdan · 2022-03-04T13:40:45Z

Ah, I see. I was thinking mainly of end users directly reading build.Default.GOROOT. Presumably we need to do something about that one way or another.

bcmills · 2022-03-04T20:12:32Z

The one case I can think of where runtime.GOROOT() may still be helpful is for tests, where it may be easier to invoke runtime.GOROOT() than to shell out to go env GOROOT. The latter may not be accurate anyway if the go in $PATH is not the one used to compile the test. (Consider ~/go-devel/bin/go test ., where ~/go-devel is a GOROOT but is not listed in $PATH.)

At least in principle, it is possible for the go command to ensure that GOROOT is set accurately in the test process's environment when it is run. Then again, if we do that then the test could run os.Getenv("GOROOT") just as easily as runtime.GOROOT(). 🤔

rittneje · 2022-03-04T20:24:49Z

@bcmills I'm not sure what the use cases are for looking up GOROOT while unit testing, but one thing to keep in mind is that it is possible to compile a test binary with -c and then run it later. Consequently, it would run into the same general issues I mentioned above.

bcmills · 2022-03-04T20:28:30Z

That's true, but if you compile a test binary with -c and then run it later, you are also responsible for replicating any conditions necessary for the test to succeed (working directory, environment, etc.).

Even so, I suspect that most tests that depend on runtime.GOROOT() only do so via go/build (for example, because they are testing analyzers for Go source code), and fixing #51483 would make those tests more robust either way.

rittneje · 2022-03-04T20:39:15Z

Gotcha. Actually, as an optimization, since we know that $GOROOT takes precedence if it's set, then go/build can just check the env var first before shelling out to go env GOROOT. Then maybe such test cases can mandate the env var gets set for stabler results (as in the example you mentioned).

I guess another approach would be to have go test manipulate the PATH variable for the sub-process, by prefixing it with $(go env GOROOT)/bin. Not sure if that would be too surprising, but it does have the nice side effect of ensuring that any go commands that get spawned by the test do the more expected thing.

rsc · 2022-03-16T18:01:15Z

This proposal has been added to the active column of the proposals project
and will now be reviewed at the weekly proposal review meetings.
— rsc for the proposal review group

rsc · 2022-03-23T17:19:43Z

@bradfitz reports that he has uses of runtime.GOROOT in GitHub actions where built binaries want to find the toolchain that built them, so they can invoke it to do other things.

It seems like we probably need to enumerate the uses people have for runtime.GOROOT and what they should do instead. It doesn't help to just say "Deprecated". We have to say what to use instead.

bradfitz · 2022-03-23T17:20:03Z

For example:

bradfitz@tsdev:~/src/tailscale.com$ git grep runtime.GOROOT
net/tlsdial/tlsdial_test.go:    cmd := exec.Command(filepath.Join(runtime.GOROOT(), "bin", "go"),
tstest/archtest/qemu_test.go:                   cmd := exec.Command(filepath.Join(runtime.GOROOT(), "bin", "go"),
tstest/integration/integration.go:      goBin := filepath.Join(runtime.GOROOT(), "bin", "go"+exe())
version/modinfo_test.go:        goTool := filepath.Join(runtime.GOROOT(), "bin", "go"+exe())

rittneje · 2022-03-25T04:14:12Z

@bradfitz I'm not sure which repos those are, but this seems to at least partially align with with what @bcmills mentioned above re: tests. In that situation, we can make go test automatically set the GOROOT env var when running the test binary, and then the unit tests just look at that env var. No need for runtime.GOROOT() specifically, although it would have the same effect.

With regards to non-test binaries that intend to find the toolchain that built them, this feels somewhat ill-defined, for the reasons mentioned above, as well as issues with -trimpath. And to consult GOROOT in this case seems strange, because it could point to any arbitrary toolchain installation.

In short:

If you need the specific GOROOT with which the binary was compiled, fetch the burned in value (from debug.BuildInfo). But it should be noted that (a) it will not work if compiled with -trimpath, and (b) it might refer to a non-existent folder on the current machine. So if you are trying to use GOROOT to invoke the go toolchain, your binary won't be portable. Users have no control over the GOROOT selection, other than to recompile. Also, it should be noted that even this isn't guaranteed to give you the right toolchain, as the user may have changed the installation at that path after the fact.
If you need the currently configured GOROOT, run go env GOROOT. As an optimization, you may check for the GOROOT env var first. The resulting binary will be portable, but the result will have no guaranteed relation to the GOROOT your binary was compiled with. Users should set GOROOT or PATH appropriately to select different GOROOTs.
As a "light" version of (2), you may exclusively rely on the GOROOT env var, and fail if it is unset.
If you are in complete control of the execution environment (such as with a GitHub action), there is no need for the standard library to participate at all. Either configure your PATH appropriately (so that exec'ing go does the right thing), or set some arbitrary environment variable of your choosing (possibly GOROOT but it doesn't matter) with the path of the desired Go installation and have your application read it.

bcmills · 2022-04-01T18:24:34Z

@bradfitz, thanks for those examples. I cloned the tailscale repo and ran go test -trimpath ./net/tlsdial ./tstest/... ./version with a go built from head, and those tests already fail in that mode.

(They happen to pass when run with golang.org/dl/go1.18 or golang.org/dl/gotip because the wrappers for those binaries set GOROOT explicitly in the process environment: https://cs.opensource.google/go/dl/+/master:internal/version/version.go;l=67;drc=f798e20c9ec1dfe45a3a432d168172504ecf3b88)

~/src/tailscale.com$ ASSUME_NO_MOVING_GC_UNSAFE_RISK_IT_WITH=$(go version | grep -o 'devel .* +0000') go test -trimpath ./net/tlsdial ./tstest/... ./version -count=1
--- FAIL: TestFallbackRootWorks (0.00s)
    tlsdial_test.go:54: mkcert: fork/exec bin/go: no such file or directory,
FAIL
FAIL    tailscale.com/net/tlsdial       0.027s
ok      tailscale.com/tstest    0.021s
--- FAIL: TestInQemu (0.00s)
    --- FAIL: TestInQemu/386 (0.00s)
        qemu_test.go:69: failed:
        qemu_test.go:73: output didn't contain "I am linux/386":
FAIL
FAIL    tailscale.com/tstest/archtest   0.017s
--- FAIL: TestOneNodeUpNoAuth (0.01s)
    integration_test.go:518: DERP httpsrv listener: 127.0.0.1:39475
    integration.go:63: failed to find go at bin/go
    stuntest.go:64: STUN server shutdown
--- FAIL: TestAddPingRequest (0.01s)
    integration_test.go:518: DERP httpsrv listener: 127.0.0.1:43717
    integration.go:63: failed to find go at bin/go
    stuntest.go:64: STUN server shutdown
--- FAIL: TestOneNodeUpAuth (0.01s)
    integration_test.go:518: DERP httpsrv listener: 127.0.0.1:45951
    integration.go:63: failed to find go at bin/go
    stuntest.go:64: STUN server shutdown
--- FAIL: TestCollectPanic (0.01s)
    integration_test.go:518: DERP httpsrv listener: 127.0.0.1:40909
    integration.go:63: failed to find go at bin/go
    stuntest.go:64: STUN server shutdown
--- FAIL: TestTwoNodes (0.01s)
    integration_test.go:518: DERP httpsrv listener: 127.0.0.1:36241
    integration.go:63: failed to find go at bin/go
    stuntest.go:64: STUN server shutdown
--- FAIL: TestNoControlConnWhenDown (0.01s)
    integration_test.go:518: DERP httpsrv listener: 127.0.0.1:36325
    integration.go:63: failed to find go at bin/go
    stuntest.go:64: STUN server shutdown
--- FAIL: TestControlTimeLogLine (0.01s)
    integration_test.go:518: DERP httpsrv listener: 127.0.0.1:37683
    integration.go:63: failed to find go at bin/go
    stuntest.go:64: STUN server shutdown
--- FAIL: TestNodeAddressIPFields (0.01s)
    integration_test.go:518: DERP httpsrv listener: 127.0.0.1:41095
    integration.go:63: failed to find go at bin/go
    stuntest.go:64: STUN server shutdown
--- FAIL: TestStateSavedOnStart (0.01s)
    integration_test.go:518: DERP httpsrv listener: 127.0.0.1:37661
    integration.go:63: failed to find go at bin/go
    stuntest.go:64: STUN server shutdown
--- FAIL: TestOneNodeExpiredKey (0.01s)
    integration_test.go:518: DERP httpsrv listener: 127.0.0.1:40891
    integration.go:63: failed to find go at bin/go
    stuntest.go:64: STUN server shutdown
--- FAIL: TestLogoutRemovesAllPeers (0.01s)
    integration_test.go:518: DERP httpsrv listener: 127.0.0.1:45759
    integration.go:63: failed to find go at bin/go
    stuntest.go:64: STUN server shutdown
--- FAIL: TestOneNodeUpWindowsStyle (0.01s)
    integration_test.go:518: DERP httpsrv listener: 127.0.0.1:38921
    integration.go:63: failed to find go at bin/go
    stuntest.go:64: STUN server shutdown
FAIL
FAIL    tailscale.com/tstest/integration        0.076s
?       tailscale.com/tstest/integration/testcontrol    [no test files]
ok      tailscale.com/tstest/integration/vms    0.092s
?       tailscale.com/tstest/integration/vms/gen        [no test files]
ok      tailscale.com/tstest/natlab     0.009s
--- FAIL: TestFindModuleInfo (0.00s)
    modinfo_test.go:22: failed to build tailscaled: fork/exec bin/go: no such file or directory
FAIL
FAIL    tailscale.com/version   0.014s
FAIL

There is also no guarantee in general that even a non-empty runtime.GOROOT() reports the GOROOT with which the test binary was actually built. (For example, the test could be built with go test -c and the GOROOT subsequently rebuilt at an entirely different version.)

That's of course fine for tailscale's own code if you're ok with those failure modes, but may be further evidence that we should discourage that pattern in general. 😅

A more robust approach might be to simply look for go in the usual $PATH and either skip or fail the test if go env GOVERSION does not match runtime.GOVERSION(). (See https://go.dev/play/p/5Vg4frf8pIk for a sketch. Maybe we should publish that as a supported test-helper somewhere?)

rsc · 2022-04-06T17:24:48Z

Is "finding the go command" the only thing we need GOROOT for? Probably?
We have internal/testenv.GoToolCmd so clearly we need it frequently.
Maybe we can solve that more limited problem?

Possibilities:

New API and a new environment variable that 'go test' would start setting when running the test binary.
New API using $GOROOT, which 'go test' would start setting when running the test binary.
Have 'go test' put the Go bin directory at the front of $PATH before running the test binary. (No new API!)

Number 3 would fit well with non-test code like go/build and go/packages that already assume that looking for "go" in your PATH is the one you want.

Thoughts on finding the go command?

And thoughts on any other needs from GOROOT?

bcmills · 2022-04-11T16:30:36Z

New API and a new environment variable that 'go test' would start setting when running the test binary.

That wouldn't necessarily even require a new environment variable: a flag might suffice. I think the API is the tricky part.

Maybe:

package testing

// GOROOT reports the GOROOT with which the test was built, if known.
// This function may report a non-empty GOROOT even if runtime.GOROOT
// returns the empty string (such as if the test was built with -trimpath).
func GOROOT() (string, bool)

bcmills · 2022-04-11T16:31:05Z

New API using $GOROOT, which 'go test' would start setting when running the test binary.

Having go test set $GOROOT would hide erroneous existing uses of runtime.GOROOT: having the variable set would mean that runtime.GOROOT always reports the test's real GOROOT, which would mask cases where a corresponding production binary would be unable to locate it.

I think this option is not really much better than deciding not to deprecate runtime.GOROOT() at all, which IMO is unfortunate because it interacts so badly with -trimpath.

bcmills · 2022-04-11T17:01:22Z

Have 'go test' put the Go bin directory at the front of $PATH before running the test binary. (No new API!)

I like that approach a lot overall. It looks like GOROOT/bin normally contains only go and gofmt — neither of which should pollute the search namespace very much — and I suspect that a large fraction of tests that run go and/or gofmt already assume that the binary matches the Go version used to build and run the test itself.

That would also make it fairly trivial to identify the GOROOT location in general, since the test binary could just exec go env GOROOT.

rsc · 2022-04-13T17:27:56Z

It sounds like people like "Have 'go test' put the Go bin directory at the front of $PATH before running the test binary." so let's start with that. @bcmills, want to write a CL for that?

Then tests and things like go/packages that exec "go" will work fine without runtime.GOROOT.

At that point, what is left for use cases for runtime.GOROOT?

danderson · 2022-04-13T17:52:06Z

@rsc making sure I understand your last response: would go test still obey the GOROOT environment variable when figuring out what Go bin directory to add to $PATH?

bcmills · 2022-04-19T21:29:56Z

@danderson, the go command and runtime.GOROOT would continue to respond to the GOROOT environment variable as they already do. (We would just discourage the use of runtime.GOROOT specifically, since it is overly sensitive to the presence of that variable.)

rsc · 2022-05-04T17:25:07Z

Are there any other problems with deprecating runtime.GOROOT, once we've guaranteed that "go in the PATH" is the right go during a test?

gopherbot · 2022-05-04T19:46:52Z

Change https://go.dev/cl/404134 mentions this issue: cmd/go: place GOROOT/bin at the beginning of PATH in 'go generate' and 'go test'

bcmills · 2022-05-04T19:47:48Z

https://go.dev/cl/404134 contains the suggested change to go test. For similar reasons I also applied it to go generate.

rsc · 2022-05-11T17:33:22Z

It sounds like CL 404134 will be in Go 1.19. Let's see how that goes and circle back to this.
Holding issue for Go 1.19.

rsc · 2022-05-11T18:02:41Z

Placed on hold.
— rsc for the proposal review group

rittneje added the Proposal label Mar 4, 2022

gopherbot added this to the Proposal milestone Mar 4, 2022

rittneje mentioned this issue Mar 4, 2022

cmd/go,runtime: runtime.GOROOT returns an invalid, non-empty string when built with -trimpath #51461

Closed

ianlancetaylor added this to Incoming in Proposals Mar 4, 2022

rittneje mentioned this issue Mar 4, 2022

go/build: Default.Import fails for standard-library packages when built with -trimpath #51483

Closed

rsc moved this from Incoming to Active in Proposals Mar 16, 2022

rsc moved this from Active to Hold in Proposals May 11, 2022

rsc added the Proposal-Hold label May 11, 2022

golang / go Public

proposal: runtime: deprecate GOROOT() function #51473

proposal: runtime: deprecate GOROOT() function #51473

rittneje commented Mar 4, 2022 •

edited

mvdan commented Mar 4, 2022

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rittneje commented Mar 4, 2022

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edited

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edited

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rsc commented Apr 6, 2022

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rsc commented May 4, 2022

gopherbot commented May 4, 2022

bcmills commented May 4, 2022

rsc commented May 11, 2022

rsc commented May 11, 2022

golang / go Public

proposal: runtime: deprecate GOROOT() function #51473

proposal: runtime: deprecate GOROOT() function #51473

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