Google have released Go 1.11, with the two new standout features listed as modules for dependency management and WebAssembly compilation support, although both are still in the experimental stage.
Modules provide an alternative to GOPATH to locate dependencies for a project and to manage versioning. If the go command is run outside of $GOPATH/src in a directory where a module is present, then modules are enabled, otherwise go will use GOPATH. As Google's Russ Cox explains:
A Go module is a collection of packages sharing a common import path prefix, known as the module path. The module is the unit of versioning, and module versions are written as semantic version strings. When developing using Git, developers will define a new semantic version of a module by adding a tag to the module’s Git repository. Although semantic versions are strongly preferred, referring to specific commits will be supported as well.
A module is created using go mod and is defined by a go.mod file in the module root which lists all required packages with their version numbers. For example, this is a simple module definition file declaring the module’s base directory and two dependencies that is created running go mod -init -module example.com/m:
module example.com/m
require (
golang.org/x/text v0.3.0
gopkg.in/yaml.v2 v2.1.0
)
Once the go.mod file exists, commands like go build, go test, or go list will automatically add new dependencies to satisfy imports. For example, importing rsc.io/quote in your main package, then executing go run would add require rsc.io/quote v1.5.2 to go.mod. Similarly, the go get command updates go.mod to change the module versions used in a build and may upgrade or downgrade any recursive dependencies.
More details on modules syntax can be found running go help modules. The feature will remain in experimental stage at least until Go 1.12 and the Go team will strive to preserve compatibility. Once modules are stable, support for working with GOPATH will be removed.
Support for WebAssembly aims to make it possible to run Go programs inside of Web browsers by allowing programmers to compile Go programs to the Wasm format supported by the four major browsers. You can compile a Go program for the Web running: GOARCH=wasm GOOS=js go build -o test.wasm main.go. This will produce three files, wasm_exec.html, wasm_exec.js, and test.wasm, that you can deploy to your HTTP server or load directly into a browser. The js package can be used for DOM manipulation.
For full list of all changes in Go 1.11, do not miss the official release notes. You can find here a list of all available downloads.