[pkg-go] Bug#868046: gb uses /usr/lib/go-1.7 even if go 1.8 is installed

[Tianon Gravi]

On 11 July 2017 at 14:43, Michael Hudson-Doyle
<michael.hudson at canonical.com> wrote:
> Maybe it just makes sense for gb to (build-)depend on whichever
> golang-1.X-go directly.

I think you're probably right... :(

(Or perhaps we build-depend on golang-go, and explicitly depend on
whichever package that pulls in?  Although that would make updating it
require a binNMU, which is a bit annoying.)

We can't (easily) just "use whichever version is installed", since gb
has to be recompiled against every Go update.  For that, you might as
well skip the "gb" package and use "go get" instead (as recommended by
upstream).

Additionally, Go itself no longer uses alternatives because then the
software built in the archive might be built against any installed Go,
and package maintainers lose control over which version actually gets
used.

So TL;DR, I think Michael is right -- we probably need to just
explicitly (build-)depend on golang-1.X-go directly, and manually
update the package for each Go release (assuming gb is compatible with
the given release, which this method of updating would also help
ensure).


♥,
- Tianon
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