[pkg-go] Go package and executables in PATH

[Tong Sun]

On Mon, Jun 5, 2017 at 12:16 AM, Vincent Bernat - bernat at debian.org wrote:

>  ❦  4 juin 2017 18:27 -0400, pkgoyq.xpt at neverbox.com :
>
> >> > Does Debian have such arrangement as well (no Go executables in PATH)
> >> > having installed a (minimum) golang-1.x-go package?
> >>
> >> You need to install golang-go package. Currently, this will use Go
> >> 1.7.
> >
> > Would it be a better option to have golang-1.x-go packages to link Go
> > executables into PATH, instead of golang-go?
>
> In the past, users were able to choose their Go version with the
> "update-alternatives" mechanism. However, this doesn't work well for
> compilers as packages would be built with a different version depending
> on the environment. gcc is in the same situation.
>


Oh, duh. So using `update-alternatives` doesn't work well to switch Go
versions. So that seems to be another reason to put executables back into
PATH in golang-1.x-go package, because I presume that more than 99% of
people would only install one version of go, and expect it would work,
without any more extra manual intervention, like all other tools that they
are installing.

> Many people would avoid installing golang-go package so as not to pull in
> > so many other packages that they don't need. I even go to the extreme and
> > didn't even install golang-1.8. Would it better to provide such choice
> for
> > them, instead of forcing them to install so many other packages that they
> > don't need?
>
> golang-go depends on golang-1.x-go and golang-src which in turn depends
> on golang-1.x-src. golang-1.x-go also depends on golang-1.x-src. So, you
> end with the same set of packages.
>

If that was the intention, then maybe golang-1.7 is not doing it right?
I.e., I totally agree that installing golang-go should not pull in more
dependents than golang-1.x-go, however, golang-1.7 depends on
golang-1.7-doc (https://packages.debian.org/unstable/golang-1.7) -- I bet
most people would look up documents from the internet, despite that they
have golang doc installed locally.

I.e., that golang doc dependency is not necessary, and should be changed to
suggest instead.

Thoughts?
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