Go 1.16 is released

Posted on 2021-02-17 Edited on 2024-09-12 In Programming Language , Golang (Go) Views: Word count in article: 1.3k Reading time ≈ 1 mins.

Go 1.16

Go is an open source programming language that makes it easy to build simple, reliable, and efficient software.

The Go team is very happy to announce the release of Go 1.16 at 16 February 2021. You can get it from the download page Downloads - The Go Programming Language - https://golang.org/dl/.

Or upgrade.

1 2	# macOS $ brew upgrade go

Feature

Here is the main feature within Go 1.16.

embed package

The new embed package provides access to files embedded at compile time using the new //go:embed directive. Now it is easy to bundle supporting data files into your Go programs, making developing with Go even smoother. You can get started using the embed package documentation. Carl Johnson has also written a nice tutorial, “How to use Go embed”.

macOS ARM64 (Apple silicon) support

Go 1.16 also adds macOS ARM64 support (also known as Apple silicon). Since Apple’s announcement of their new arm64 architecture, we have been working closely with them to ensure Go is fully supported; see our blog post “Go on ARM and Beyond” for more.

Use of Go modules by default

Note that Go 1.16 requires use of Go modules by default, now that, according to our 2020 Go Developer Survey, 96% of Go developers have made the switch. We recently added official documentation for developing and publishing modules.