Go1.8 officially released

This is a creation in Article, where the information may have evolved or changed.

Today the Go Team was pleased to announce that go 1.8 was released. You can get version 1.8 from the download page. In this release, the entire standard library has significant performance improvements and changes.

The compiler backend introduced for the 64-bit x86 system in Go 1.7 is now used for all architectures, where significant performance improvements can be seen. For example, the CPU time required for our benchmark program reduces 20-30% on 32-bit ARM systems. In this release, there are some performance gains for the 64-bit x86 system. The compiler and linker run faster. Compile time should be about 15% shorter than go 1.7. There is more work to do in this area: it is hoped that future versions will be compiled faster.

Garbage collection pauses should be significantly shorter, typically less than 100 microseconds, typically as low as 10 microseconds.

The HTTP server adds support for HTTP/2 push, allowing the server to push to the client. This is useful for eliminating network latency. The HTTP server also adds support for graceful outages, allowing the server to shut down after a running request is completed to minimize downtime.

The context (added to the standard library in Go 1.7) provides a cancellation and timeout mechanism. Go 1.8 adds support for the context to more standard libraries, including database/sql and net packages, and Server.shutdown in the Net/http package.

Using the newly added slice function now makes it easier to sort the slice. For example, to sort a structure fragment through the Name field:

sort . slice  (S, func    bool {return  S[i]. name  < S[j]. name }) 

Go 1.8 includes many new APIs, as well as improvements and fixes to the old API. You can find the complete list of changes in the Go 1.8 release notes, as well as more information about what is listed above.

To celebrate the new release, go groups around the world are hosting a conference this week. The Conference has become a tradition in the go community, so if you miss this one, you should pay attention when 1.9 is released.

Thanks to over 200 contributors who helped release the 1.8 release.