The main problem with “on first add” warnings is that users often don't have control over when things are added: it's easy for a tool to accidentally do the thing that triggers the warning (and then not log the warning, because the command completed successfully), and then the warning is buried ~forever. (Compare rust-lang/cargo#5560.)

The editor integration seems more interesting, in that editors have the opportunity to surface low-priority information based on what the user is viewing rather than based on what they are doing.

it's easy for a tool to accidentally do the thing that triggers the warning (and then not log the warning, because the command completed successfully), and then the warning is buried ~forever

Do you have a concrete example of this? I just use the go tool to manage my dependencies.

It seems a bit cavalier to dismiss the utility of this proposal just because some people or tools might ignore the output.

Do you have a concrete example of this?

Consider the following scenarios:

• You run a command that produces a lot of output, such as go test all or go test -v ./..., then go back to editing your code (or go get a coffee or otherwise turn your attention from the go test command). By the time you look at the output (all tests passed!), the warning has scrolled well off the screen.

• You receive a pull request from an external user who copied the change from a local patch, and didn't feel like rewriting their patch (or even mentioning the newer version) when they mailed you the change.

• You added an import to a file, and now gopls is suggesting a change to your go.mod file to add the corresponding module (perhaps based on an internal, background go mod tidy run). You add it.

In all of these cases, the warning appeared at some point but was either ignored or missed entirely.

If it is important to surface out-of-date dependencies, I don't think a one-time warning is a good way to do that because it's so easy to miss the one time it appears. (Or, to put it another way: if it's unimportant enough that we shouldn't worry about the user missing the warning, then it's probably not important enough to emit the warning in the first place.)

CC @jayconrod @matloob

These proposals aren't intended to be perfect or exhaustive solutions to the complex problems they address — they're intended to be (substantial) improvements to the status quo. It is of course possible that a user could add a new module dependency to their project and then run the go tool in such a way that it would be easy to miss the messages we're proposing to add. YMMV, but I think it is much more likely, and far more common, that users add dependencies deliberately, and do pay attention to the results of the fetch.

YMMV, but I think it is much more likely, and far more common, that users add dependencies deliberately, and do pay attention to the results of the fetch.

I commented over in #40357 (comment). I suspect in these days of gopls that the goimports-esque workflow is actually the most common.

Hence:

The editor integration seems more interesting, in that editors have the opportunity to surface low-priority information based on what the user is viewing rather than based on what they are doing.

is I think the best way to surface this information.

It seems a bit cavalier to dismiss the utility of this proposal just because some people or tools might ignore the output

@adg - I don't think this is a fair or particularly charitable interpretation of @bcmills' response. @bcmills made an observation about the problems associated with “on first add” warnings, cited an example, and then went on to agree with the proposal in the context of surfacing this via editor integrations. I don't think I would characterise that as "dismiss(ing) the utility of this proposal".

As some context, the golang-tools group has been discussing problems/solutions such as this since GopherCon 2018 (the group was largely established in the wake of the vgo release). I might well be biased, but based on previous experience the monthly calls are a good opportunity for discussion of these problems/solutions/options in the pre-proposal (design) phase.

This overlaps a bit with #40357, but I assume if a module author explicitly deprecates a major version with a comment in go.mod, then the go command wouldn't also show this notice.

I think some signal from the module author should be required to show a notice though, for two reasons:

1. If a new major version is available, it doesn't necessarily mean the old major version is deprecated. Even if no new features are added, an old major version may still receive bug fixes and security updates. Users might still depend on features in the old version that were removed. Basically, migrating to a new major version isn't necessarily the right choice for users. While the messages proposed here don't suggest an action, I feel like they imply that.
2. If we're telling users about a new major version, we should provide an action they can take to migrate. Because major versions are incompatible changes, there's nothing we can do automatically, yet. It would be better for the author to provide migration instructions in a deprecation notice. Or ideally, if migrations were automated (proposal: cmd/fix: automate migrations for simple deprecations #32816), we could tell people what command to run.

I think some signal from the module author should be required to show a notice

The problem we're trying to solve is package consumers who intend to take the latest major version of a module, but select an old version due to unfamiliarity with the nuances of SIV. Making package authors opt-in to this notification wold subvert the intent and impact of the proposal.

If a new major version is available, it doesn't necessarily mean the old major version is deprecated.

The notification that a new major version is available is in no way a signal of deprecation of the current version. There is another proposal for authors who want to opt in to that stronger messaging.

If we're telling users about a new major version, we should provide an action they can take to migrate.

We initially had the notification include a command to make the upgrade, but went with this version in the end. Happy to switch back if that's the consensus.

If a new major version is available, it doesn't necessarily mean the old major version is deprecated.

The problem is that they look like warnings and will create more and more noise as a project gets older. Instead of putting it on a separate line, it could just be combined with the existing output.

$ go list -m -u all
example.com/my-module
github.com/BurntSushi/toml v0.3.1
github.com/mitchellh/go-wordwrap v1.0.0
github.com/peterbourgon/ff v1.6.0 [v1.7.0] [latest v3.1.0]

The problem is that they look like warnings and will create more and more noise as a project gets older.

We propose only a single line of output per dependency, specifically with a "note" or "notice" (read: not "warning") prefix, output only the first time the dependency is added to a project, and identifying only the most recent version of that dependency. I don't think this looks like a warning, nor does it create more noise over time.

edit: Also, to me, putting the notification inline implies some level of compatibility between major versions that feels misleading.

Instead of putting it on a separate line, it could just be combined with the existing output.

By itself, this would be insufficiently obvious to solve the problem we're trying to solve with this proposal.

nor does it create more noise over time.

Over time, as new major versions of your dependencies are released, more notices are printed.

Over time, as new major versions of your dependencies are released, more notices are printed.

No, I don't think so. At least, the proposal doesn't intend so. Notices are only printed when a dependency is first added to a project at an older major version, or upgraded within an older major version tree. In other words, the trigger is not "a new major version of one of your dependencies is now available" but rather "you have added or upgraded a dependency to your project on a major version which is not the latest". And in all cases the notice only includes the most recent major version, not all major versions greater than the currently pinned major version.

@bcmills wrote:

The main problem with “on first add” warnings is that users often don't have control over when things are added

The "on first add" part is just one part of this proposal. We also suggest printing the message when the user is looking to upgrade their module dependencies with go list -m -u all. That seems like an opportune time to present such a message. Do you agree?

@myitcv wrote:

I don't think this is a fair or particularly charitable interpretation of @bcmills' response. @bcmills made an observation about the problems associated with “on first add” warnings, cited an example, and then went on to agree with the proposal in the context of surfacing this via editor integrations. I don't think I would characterise that as "dismiss(ing) the utility of this proposal".

I apologise for my reaction, as opposed to a response. As someone who doesn't use the various editor integrations, I read @bcmills's response as a dismissal of my workflow. I still read it that way, but I recognise that the onus is on me to explain myself better here. Mea culpa.

the golang-tools group has been discussing problems/solutions

A little off topic in this thread, but: I would like to be involved but 15:30 UTC is 01:30 in my time zone, and I am ~never awake then. Real time chat does not work for me either; I struggle enough to stay on top of my asynchronous obligations as it is. I appreciate that there is some focused discussion on these issues, though. I will try to find some time to look through the minutes from previous meetings.

@icholy wrote:

Instead of putting it on a separate line, it could just be combined with the existing output.

@peterbourgon wrote:

By itself, this would be insufficiently obvious to solve the problem we're trying to solve with this proposal.

FWIW, I am not opposed to this suggestion. If the user is looking to upgrade their modules with go list -m -u all, then they are likely already scrutinising each line to see whether they should be ugprading.

I would make a small change to @icholy's suggestion, which is to include the full module path of the new major version, as it is different to the one printed on the line. So instead of this

github.com/peterbourgon/ff v1.6.0 [v1.7.0] [latest v3.1.0]

we should print something like

github.com/peterbourgon/ff v1.6.0 [v1.7.0] latest major version: github.com/peterbourgon/ff/v3 v3.1.0

But I do note that at that point things become crowded, and perhaps the two-line version in the OP is preferable.

We also suggest printing the message when the user is looking to upgrade their module dependencies with go list -m -u all. That seems like an opportune time to present such a message. Do you agree?

I think the related proposal #40357 is probably a good idea.

However, especially given that proposal, I suspect that the log message from this proposal would be too noisy, for the reasons described by @jayconrod in #40323 (comment). I suspect that users will generally ignore the log message if it is not accompanied by instructions (or a tool!) to fix incompatible call sites, and even if they do know how to make the change it's not obviously worth the churn if the major version they are already using is itself still supported.

On balance if we had to choose one proposal or the other I'd go with #40357, but I do think both proposal serve different purposes, and would work nicely together.

Updating between major versions is almost always going to the user to read some documentation and write some code. Whether they want to make the change is a judgment that only the consumer can make. Yes, we can't necessarily provide an easy upgrade path, but is that a reason not to offer them the information?

If the overwhelming concern is noise, perhaps we could try putting together a functional prototype of the command and see just how noisy it is on typical projects. IMO, such information isn't "noise" when I'm specifically asking about updates. But maybe it would become overwhelming? My gut says no, but I can't say for sure without trying it out.

gopls is great, but it should be possible to query this info without using third party tooling.

edit: is the intent to discourage publishing new major versions? (Not being facetious).

@bcmills

I suspect that users will generally ignore the log message if it is not accompanied by instructions (or a tool!) to fix incompatible call sites,

One, this proposal is a response to the specific condition described in the problem statement, which is module consumers inadvertently selecting an old, typically v0/v1, major version of a module, when they intended to select the latest major version. This has happened to me, and to colleagues and peers, enough times that I was motivated to brainstorm, draft, iterate, submit, and re-submit this proposal with Andrew and Zach. Your critique seems to dismiss this initial condition as either invalid or so infrequent as to not be worth addressing. Is that your intent? Do you think this doesn't happen?

Two, the message is not printed only after the consumer has written code against the older major version which would need to be changed, it is also printed when the module consumer first imports the module. It's at that time that the proposal delivers the most value, in my opinion. Rather than wasting time integrating against an old version, the consumer can realize what happened and express their intent correctly.

Three, I personally have no expectation that module authors provide explicit upgrade instructions between major versions, and certainly not that there is any kind of tooling to do so automatically. Actually I've never heard this desire expressed by anyone I've ever interacted with, until now. Is this something that's common at Google? In any case, I don't think the lack of this theoretical tooling should impact the judgment of this proposal.

and even if they do know how to make the change it's not obviously worth the churn if the major version they are already using is itself still supported.

Is github.com/google/go-github v10.0.0 still supported, even though the latest version is currently v32.1.0? Is your position that someone who had inadvertently selected this ancient version would see the message suggested by this proposal as delivering net negative value?

@myitcv @adg

the golang-tools group has been discussing problems/solutions

A little off topic in this thread, but: I would like to be involved but 15:30 UTC is 01:30 in my time zone, and I am ~never awake then. Real time chat does not work for me either; I struggle enough to stay on top of my asynchronous obligations as it is. I appreciate that there is some focused discussion on these issues, though. I will try to find some time to look through the minutes from previous meetings.

For the record, I intend to join the next meeting/s. I'll keep an eye on the wiki page for the next scheduled date, but please poke me in Slack when it's coming up, if you don't mind.

If the overwhelming concern is noise, perhaps we could try putting together a functional prototype of the command and see just how noisy it is on typical projects.

I generally love this idea. We don't need to speculate as to how noise when we can directly observe (and maybe have others here try this).

I personally have no expectation that module authors provide explicit upgrade instructions between major versions, and certainly not that there is any kind of tooling to do so automatically.

Really big plus one here. A major version upgrade, to me, means that an author will spend time understanding what about the library has changed in addition to how to upgrade their code to support it. Whether they then perform the upgrade themselves or there is some automation to do perform it doesn't prevent the need for that initial understanding.

It sounds like the main part of the disagreement here is about whether the module author should be able to keep this from happening. As written, this proposal does not let a module author who is perfectly happy maintaining v1 and v2 indefinitely stop the (implicit) "you should update to v2" messages every time a user starts using v1. Especially if v2 is not as capable as v1, that could be quite annoying for users, who will then complain to the author.

That is, this proposal forces a particular usage of module versions that is not strictly required to date.

In contrast, #40357 puts control over whether users are told about the new version in the module author's hands.

Do I have that right?

@rsc

As written, this proposal does not let a module author who is perfectly happy maintaining v1 and v2 indefinitely stop the (implicit) "you should update to v2" messages every time a user starts using v1. Especially if v2 is not as capable as v1, that could be quite annoying for users, who will then complain to the author.

That is, this proposal forces a particular usage of module versions that is not strictly required to date.

I hope the proposed message doesn't imply, explicitly or implicitly, that the consumer should upgrade their version. I certainly hope the proposal isn't read as forcing an interpretation of module versioning. If there is a way to lighten the message to avoid this interpretation, I'd be happy to change it.

(It does seem both obvious and uncontroversial to me that, absent extenuating circumstances, a larger/newer major version of a software artifact should be preferred to a smaller/older one — but that's a philosophical discussion that we don't need to have here.)

It sounds like the main part of the disagreement here is about whether the module author should be able to keep this from happening.

I think it's important that this message isn't opt-in, but I'd be fine with it being opt-out.

this proposal is a response to … module consumers inadvertently selecting an old, typically v0/v1, major version of a module, when they intended to select the latest major version. … Your critique seems to dismiss this initial condition as either invalid or so infrequent as to not be worth addressing. Is that your intent? Do you think this doesn't happen?

I think it does happen, but I think the appropriate point to intervene is usually earlier in the workflow. If a user has written an import statement, they got the idea to write that import from somewhere — a website (maybe pkg.go.dev or a code snippet from someone's blog), or a tool (perhaps goimports or gopls), or a snippet copied from some existing project.

If they got the import path from pkg.go.dev and didn't notice the version skew there, that's #37765 or perhaps #36969.

If they got it from goimports or gopls, then there may be a heuristic in those to fix. (If so, please file a separate issue.)

So that leaves a code snippet copied from some existing project, or perhaps a blog or tutorial. But in that case, why would you infer that they intended to use the latest version, rather than the version that the rest of their code snippet was written against? The rest of the code snippet is likely to not even work with a different major version.

Personally, my workflow is a) I find the github (or whatever) page of the package I'm interested in, b) I type go get github.com/foo/bar (by hand) into my shell and c) I use bar.Baz() in my code and let goimports add the import statement.

So personally, I'd benefit from a warning on go get. Arguably, my workflow is bad and I am trying to be better about remembering major versions and type a more specific module path into my shell. But notably, I don't copy it from anywhere - I just type the name I think is correct.

Thanks @icholy - I used your tool based on a recommendation from @seankhliao and twpayne/chezmoi#889 was the result.

There's a deeper issue of course: the use of semantic versioning in Go modules assumes that module developers always know when they break backwards compatibility and need to tag a new major version. This assumption is obviously and demonstrably false (obligatory XKCD: https://xkcd.com/1172/) but this has already been widely discussed.

@twpayne go release is meant to help with that. There's an experimental version at golang.org/x/exp/cmd/gorelease.

If an author finds that they have unintentionally broken backward compatibility, one option is to revert the change, tag a new release, and retract releases containing the change (#24031).

In practice, many open source projects can only afford to keep the most recent major version up to date with bug fixes, so it's generally worth making the effort to maintain your own code to use the most recent major version.
…
In short, in open source, you're almost always better off using the latest version, be that major, minor, or patch, and it would be nice if a tool existed to help you do that.

I agree that in open source you're generally best off using the latest version, but it's also important to be able to migrate on your own time, when the benefits outweigh the cost of migration. For that reason, authors should communicate both their support policy and their intended migration path for users, generally in a README and/or a deprecation notice. (The latter is slated for support in the Go toolchain as #40357.)

For the example you mentioned, github.com/Masterminds/sprig, the README says (emphasis mine):

There are two active major versions of the sprig package.
…

• v2 is the previous stable release series. It has been more than three years since the initial release of v2. You can read the documentation and see the code on the release-2 branch. Bug fixes to this major version will continue for some time.

In this case it appears that v2 remains supported as well — so, while you might want to upgrade to the v3 API in order to use new features or in anticipation of some future deprecation of the v2 API, that migration does not appear to block your ability to pull in fixes for critical bugs today. To me, that indicates that the v2-to-v3 migration does not have the same importance as, say, pulling in fixes from the latest v2 minor or patch release.

If they got it from goimports or gopls, then there may be a heuristic in those to fix. (If so, please file a separate issue.)

That appears to be #41800.

#41501 is the analogous issue for cmd/doc.

I just want to mention, in case any of you missed it, that pkg.go.dev now surfaces later major versions (#37765). For instance, if you visit https://pkg.go.dev/github.com/russross/blackfriday you'll see "The latest major version is v2" near the top.

you'll see "The latest major version is v2" near the top.

It's there, but even with its distinguishing information icon, I still missed it in my first two scans of the page. There's no other deviation I see from the site's white, black, and blue palette, but is it too controversial to propose using a color like orange or red to make it stand out more?

@seh, it really shouldn't be orange or red or blink. The point that we've made repeatedly in this discussion is that the mere existence of v2 does not mean that everyone using v1 needs to be coerced into updating.

Now, if the module was flagged as deprecated (#40357), then that would be appropriate to make orange or red or blink.

That's the fundamental difference between that issue and this one. This issue takes as a given the proposition that if an author has published v2, v1 is deprecated and should no longer be used. That's just not always true, and we should not act as though it is true in the absence of a clearer signal from the module author. #40357 provides that clearer signal.

I see your point, Russ. Please keep my suggestion in mind for the deprecated case.

Usually when I'm browsing the documentation like this, I'm already trying to use the latest major version available, so the mere existence of a new version is enough to trigger me to take a closer look, and makes me start trying to figure out if it's worth upgrading.

@rsc

This issue takes as a given the proposition that if an author has published v2, v1 is deprecated and should no longer be used. That's just not always true, and we should not act as though it is true in the absence of a clearer signal from the module author.

I'm sorry that this proposal fails to communicate its intent in such a way that you can draw this conclusion — that's our fault as the authors. To be clear: this isn't an assumption the proposal makes, nor is it what we want to communicate with the notification. Instead, the assumption is that if an author has published v2, it should be preferred to v1, absent any signal suggesting otherwise. I believe that's true in the general case, and I hope it's noncontroversial.

@bcmills

@icholy, we know what form a newer major version would take if it did exist, so (assuming no gaps in the major-version sequence) we could detect the presence of the immediate next version with an O(1) check, and find the highest major version in O(N). I think it's reasonable for us to miss the notification if authors skip straight from vN to vN+2. (Don't do that!)

We would need to be a little careful to check for both example.com/vN and example.com vN.0.0+incompatible, but it's not fundamentally a problem.

I ran into the "assuming no gaps in the major-version sequence" scenario with https://github.com/coreos/go-systemd. Prior to modules, it was tagged with v1 to v21 which the proxy does not support. Version v22.0.0 is the first version that supports modules. However, there's no way to discover that because the intermediate versions are missing: https://proxy.golang.org/github.com/coreos/go-systemd/@v/list

AFAIK this isn't a common issue, but I thought it was worth documenting.

edit: related coreos/go-systemd#346

Is there currently a (workaround) command to solve this requirement?
A command to list available major version upgrades for any direct dependencies in my module?
Or can this only be achieved with third party tools?

@falco467 third party tools only.

@falco467 third party tools only.

that is quite sad, since this will lead to projects stuck on old major versions of dependencies.

Four years later and this is still open causing a lot of applications to not get updated with new major releases. This also affects dependabot as noted here dependabot/dependabot-core#2213

I also think this needs a revisit. I recently asked on the Gophers Slack channel and it seems that some people are confused that go get -u would do the job. I believe this is dangerous design.

For the record, there are already notes (warnings) as part of go get command:

$ go get -u ./...
...
note: imported by a module that requires go 1.21

Tho the argument of multiple major versions being considered stable and "good enough" by maintainers is a valid point. Now that is a deprecated feature in documentation, can we reconsider this feature?

One idea: if this feature is not accepted into the official Go tooling, it is possible to add a different feature into go get -u that would just check if there is a major version available during update of a package and if there is, it would insert go.sum entry nothing else. This way other tools could pick it up from here, for example a linter, and without accessing network it could immediately report this as an error or warning.

Example for a github.com/package/one that has github.com/package/one/v2 would make go get -u to create the following:

github.com/package/one v0.99.0 h1:xxxxxxxx
github.com/package/one/v2 v2.0.0 h1:xxxxxxxx

Adding some way for other tools to pick it up would be helpful, specially dependabot.

We took a look at our dependency graph and notice most users never upgraded our modules because it was a major release and they don't get notified.

For ex we have a package already on v3 and 80% of the repos using the package are still in v1.

I also love how npm-check-updates works with ncu -u mode, where it just updates the package.json (not package-lock.json) so that then you can inspect what has changed and decide what to do about it.