The half-yearly update to Go has been released with an experimental port to WebAssembly and preliminary support for modules.

Go is an open source project developed by a team at Google and many contributors from the open source community over more than 8 years. The main intended use is as a systems programming language, and it has been used in high profile commercial successes such as Docker.

The port to WebAssembly is still experimental. Go programs using the new feature compile to a single WebAssembly module that includes the Go runtime for goroutine scheduling, garbage collection, maps, and other Go essentials, resulting in a module of at least 2MB, or 500KB when compressed. Go programs can also call into JavaScript using a new experimental package. WebAssembly is a binary instruction format for a stack-based virtual machine. It is designed as a portable target for compilation of high-level languages like C/C++/Rust so apps can be deployed on the web for client and server applications.

Go 1.11 also adds preliminary support for a new concept called modules. In Go terms, this is an alternative to GOPATH with integrated support for versioning and package distribution. Using modules, developers are no longer confined to working inside GOPATH. Other advantages are that version dependency information is explicit yet lightweight, and builds are more reliable and reproducible.

Module support is considered experimental in its current form, and details are likely to change in response to feedback from Go 1.11 users. The developers also have more tools planned. They say that although the details of module support may change, projects that convert to modules using Go 1.11 will continue to work with Go 1.12 and later. 

More Information

Go 1.11 Release Notes

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