[pkg-golang-devel] putting the go version in the package names

[Michael Hudson-Doyle]

Hi all,

In Ubuntu we're considering moving to a scheme where we can have
multiple versions of go in the archive at the same time[1] (probably
called something imaginative like golang1.5, golang1.6 etc and a
metapackage golang that depends on the most recent stable release).

My motivations are:

1. enable us to upload pre-releases of new versions without breaking
everything (I particularly want to start using 1.6 pre-releases to
experiment with shared libraries)
2. enable us to backport new versions of Go to old releases without
changing the default version of Go (partly so we can also backport
things like juju -- the new azure bindings do not work with Go 1.2
that is all trusty has and partly to counter the "anything packaged is
too old" meme)

Obviously, Ubuntu deltas are bad and this would be a fairly irritating
one to maintain, so it makes sense to ask: would you accept this
change in Debian too? I'm certainly willing to do any of the grunt
work required.

Cheers,
mwh

[1] I don't really have an opinion on whether we should make them
co-installable -- given the way go is, it's probably easy enough to be
worth doing.