cmd/go: no way to check staleness of targets built with coverage

[thanm]

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

$ go version
go version devel go1.20-6d34903a85 Fri Jan 13 10:31:21 2023 -0500 linux/amd64

Does this issue reproduce with the latest release?

No.

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

Linux/amd64

What did you do?

When I install Go commands (such as cmd/link, cmd/compile) as part of coverage testing scripts (intended to collect coverage for Go itself), I find that I can't use "go list" in the normal way to test for staleness. Example:

$ // Here is a regular install; no problems here.
$ go install cmd/nm
$ go list "-f={{if .Stale}}\tSTALE {{.ImportPath}}: {{.StaleReason}}{{end}}"  cmd/nm
$
$ // Now I install an instrumented "nm"
$ go install -cover cmd/nm
$ go list "-f={{if .Stale}}\tSTALE {{.ImportPath}}: {{.StaleReason}}{{end}}"  cmd/nm
\tSTALE cmd/nm: stale dependency: internal/goarch
$ go list "-f={{if .Stale}}\tSTALE {{.ImportPath}}: {{.StaleReason}}{{end}}" -cover cmd/nm
flag provided but not defined: -cover
usage: go list [-f format] [-json] [-m] [list flags] [build flags] [packages]
Run 'go help list' for details.
$

The problem here is that the "go list" command accepts most build flags (e.g. "-x", "-tags", etc) but does not accept "-cover" and related flags.

This is something of a boutique use case, but I think it is still worth fixing.

[gopherbot]

Change https://go.dev/cl/462116 mentions this issue: cmd/go: include coverage build flags for "go list"