Google has released yet another major version of its Go programming language – version 1.4 – just six months after releasing version 1.3.
Google Go 1.4 packs multiple features and improvements over version 1.3 including “support for more operating systems and processor architectures, and improvements to the tool chain and libraries” on top of a small language change, but the most notable of all the changes is the official support for Android.
“The most notable new feature in this release is official support for Android. Using the support in the core and the libraries in the golang.org/x/mobile repository, it is now possible to write simple Android apps using only Go code”, announced Andrew Gerrand of Google in a blog post.
The change in the language is to do with the syntax of for-range loops. Developers can now write “for range s {” without having to assign the value, loop index, or map key notes Google.
Go 1.4 also has NaCL on ARM support, minor performance improvements, much of the runtime is now written in Go itself, and garbage collection improvements among other things.
Google states that programs compiled in Go 1.4 will run at the same speed or slightly faster; however, it has also warned that some programs might be “slightly slower.”
Further, the compatibility aspect has also been taken care of and Google notes that all the programs running in 1.3 will continue compiling and running on Go 1.4. You can find the release notes here.
