This is a follow-up to #57237.

In comment #57237 (comment) @robpike implied that the value of binary.NativeEndian should be comparable with == to the binary.BigEndian and binary.LittleEndian values.

Unfortunately in the current implementation added in Go 1.21, comparisons with both values fail because the type of binary.NativeEndian is different of both values because of the use of an embedded type:

type nativeEndian struct {
        bigEndian
}

Also, it makes no sense to have a specific name (NativeEndian) for binary.NativeEndian.String(). It should be either BigEndian or LittleEndian (or any weired concrete endianness added in the future).

Proposed fix

Define the type of binary.NativeEndian using a type alias instead of type embedding.

type nativeEndian = bigEndian

var NativeEndian nativeEndian

Go version

go version go1.22.2 darwin/arm64

What did you do?

https://go.dev/play/p/niinanpbVuC

func TestEqual(t *testing.T) {
	nbOK := 0
	for _, bo := range []binary.ByteOrder{
		binary.BigEndian,
		binary.LittleEndian,
	} {
		t.Logf("Native == %v: %v", bo, binary.NativeEndian == bo)
		if binary.NativeEndian == bo {
			nbOK++
		}
	}
	if nbOK != 1 {
		t.Error("1 equal expected, got", nbOK)
	}
}

What did you see happen?

=== RUN   TestEqual
    prog_test.go:14: NativeEndian == BigEndian: false
    prog_test.go:14: NativeEndian == LittleEndian: false
    prog_test.go:20: 1 equal expected, got 0
--- FAIL: TestEqual (0.00s)
FAIL

What did you expect to see?

=== RUN   TestEqual
    compile_test.go:27: NativeEndian == BigEndian: false
    compile_test.go:27: NativeEndian == LittleEndian: true
--- PASS: TestEqual (0.00s)
PASS