It isn't easy to make a slice with len > maxint.
This doesn't work:

var x [1<<63]struct{}

gives array bound is too large.

make([]struct{}, 1<<63) gives len argument too large in make([]struct {}).

And this code:

	x := []struct{}{struct{}{}}
	for {
		println(len(x))
		x = append(x, x...)
	}

eventually dies with panic: runtime error: growslice: cap out of range.

I'm out of ideas for how to actually manufacture a slice with a length bigger than maxint (without using unsafe). And I'm pretty sure that's by design.

The language does not permit the number of elements in a slice to exceed the maximum value of int. (This was one of the main reasons we changed the size of int from 32 bits to 64 bits on 64-bit systems, back in the Go 1.1 release: https://golang.org/doc/go1.1#int).