CC @jba

I think it might be on the export side of things - because the "new" side of the diff outputs the proper value, while the "old" side (I think loaded from the exported data) is reported as the mangled value. It could be that the constant value is incorrectly written at export, or incorrectly read at compat check. Since apidiff just invokes gcexportdata APIs, maybe there is an issue in there?

When I use a local install of golang.org/x/exp/cmd/apidiff @ HEAD with no changes, there is no diff - it works properly. But when I install again via go install golang.org/x/exp/cmd/apidiff@latest, rewrite the base export data, and compare, it fails with the error above.

This is also with a local install of tools/go/gcexportdata @ HEAD wired up with replace in exp. I think there are some dependency updates I picked up that fixed the issue?

Updating the golang.org/x/tools dep to v0.1.0 still does not work. Going to check individual commits to golang.org/x/tools since the v0.1.0 release that also changed the gcexportdata pkg to see if I can find the commit that fixes it. v0.1.0 was cut on 1/19/21, so there are only a handful of commits to gcexportdata to check...

I checked out golang/tools@a1db63c locally (still wired with replace) and then apidiff worked properly. I have no idea how that would fix things.

The pseudo version for that x/tools commit is v0.1.1-0.20210217070731-a1db63cc08e0.

Worth noting that some other deps in exp were updated as a result:

	golang.org/x/mod v0.4.1
	golang.org/x/sys v0.0.0-20210124154548-22da62e12c0c
	golang.org/x/xerrors v0.0.0-20200804184101-5ec99f83aff1

It was fixed by commit b79f76f, CL b79f76f
https://go-review.googlesource.com/c/tools/+/292350. Anything past that should fix it.

Ok, good to know the exact fix, but that commit hasn't been released. Is it possible to cut a release of the root module in tools? Then we can update the version used in exp to capture the fix and go install golang.org/x/exp/cmd/apidiff@latest will work.

@ianthehat Hi would it be possible to cut a release of the x/tools root module? The commit jba mentioned that has a fix for apidiff that would unblock its use in cloud.google.com/go CI. If there is some regular release schedule, we can wait on that too! Thanks.