| ### What's happening? |
| To celebrate the release of Go 1.6 we're organising a world wide release party on February the 17th, 2016. |
| |
| #### Hang on, did you say Go 1.6 ships on the 17th of February? |
| Nope! Go 1.6 ships when it's ready. With that said, things are looking pretty good for a mid Feb release. Using the power of software estimation, a date was plucked from the aether that happened to coincide with several meetups that were already in the works. |
| |
| ### Sounds awesome, how can you get involved? |
| - If you host a Go user group or meetup, schedule a meetup on the 17th of Feb and celebrate with Gophers around the world. |
| - If you're a member of a Go user group or meetup, pester your organiser and let them know you'd like to participate. |
| |
| After the event post a photo, make a video, write a blog post, scribble on your Facebook wall, or tweet something pithy. Let's see how big we can make the celebration. |
| |
| Don't forget to add your details :point_down: right here. |
| |
| #### Who's involved? |
| Here is a list of the groups who are participating. |
| - [Sydney Go users' group](http://www.meetup.com/golang-syd/events/228276309/) |
| - [Go-Miami](http://www.meetup.com/Go-Miami/events/228280324/) |
| - [San Diego Gophers](http://www.meetup.com/sdgophers/events/228129827/) |
| - [PDX Go](http://www.meetup.com/PDX-Go/events/228220792/) |
| - [GopherConIndia](http://www.gophercon.in/) |
| - [Ukrainian Golang User Groups](http://www.meetup.com/uagolang/events/228343484/) |
| - [Lviv Golang Group](http://www.meetup.com/Lviv-Golang-Group/events/228344940/) |
| - [Edmonton Go](https://edmontongo.org/) (Feb 22) |
| - [Software Craftsmanship Toulouse](http://www.meetup.com/fr-FR/Software-Craftsmanship-Toulouse/events/228285655/) |
| - [Polish GLUG Meetup](http://www.meetup.com/GoLang-User-Group-Wroclaw/events/228369658/) |
| - [Google Developer Group Gigcity](http://www.meetup.com/GDG-Gigcity/events/228373161/) |
| - [Golang Vietnam](https://www.facebook.com/events/1651152271814093/) (Feb 23) |
| - [Gophers Katowice](http://www.meetup.com/Gophers-Katowice/events/228375778/) |
| - [GoSF](http://www.meetup.com/golangsf/events/226090306/) |
| - [Boston Golang](http://www.meetup.com/Boston-Go-lang-User-Group/events/228398963/) |
| - [Go-Tampa](http://www.meetup.com/Go-Tampa/events/227365472/) |
| - [Atlanta](http://www.meetup.com/Go-Users-Group-Atlanta/events/228336134/) |
| - [GoAKL](http://www.meetup.com/Go-AKL/events/228436705/) |
| - [Golang Barcelona](http://www.meetup.com/es-ES/Golang-Barcelona/events/228438675/) |
| |
| _If your group is not listed here yet, edit the page and add yourself._ |
| _Organisers, once you've added your group, consider tweeting out a link to the page to raise awareness._ |
| |
| ### What happens in a release party? |
| Go 1.6 is the 7th release of the language which has been open source since November 10th, 2009 -- that's 6.5 years since the project was open sourced and nearly 4 years since the 1.0 release. |
| A lot has changed in the language since 1.0, so this is a great opportunity to discuss the improvements landing 1.6. |
| |
| |
| #### Go 1.6 slide deck |
| Here a Go 1.6 presentation slide deck from the Go Sydney users' group. Feel free to use this for your meetup. |
| |
| [talks.godoc.org/github.com/davecheney/gosyd/go1.6.slide](http://talks.godoc.org/github.com/davecheney/gosyd/go1.6.slide) |
| |
| _Source_: https://github.com/davecheney/gosyd/blob/master/go1.6.slide |
| |
| _Please send PR's with corrections/additions_ |
| |
| #### Go 1.6 new and noteworthy |
| |
| _Please help by expanding this section so meetup organisers can share these details with their groups._ |
| |
| - [Go 1.6 release notes (draft)](http://tip.golang.org/doc/go1.6) |
| - HTTP/2. |
| |
| Go 1.6's `net/http` package supports [HTTP/2](https://http2.golang.org/) for both the client and server out of the box. |
| [Here is a video of @bradfitz giving an overview of Go 1.6's HTTP/2 support](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gukAZO1fqZQ). |
| - Garbage Collector improvements. |
| |
| Go 1.6 focused heavily on improvements to the low latency collector shipped in Go 1.5. |
| Rick Hudson gave a [presentation at GopherCon 2015](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aiv1JOfMjm0) describing the low latency collector delivered in Go 1.5, and gave hints to the improvements being worked on for 1.6. |
| Rick recently [recorded an interview with InfoQ](http://www.infoq.com/interviews/hudson-go-gc) which focused on 1.6 in more detail. |
| - GOVENDOREXPERIMENT becomes the default. |
| |
| Go 1.5 added experimental support for a mechanism of including the source of your package's dependencies in the package itself, colloquially known as _vendoring_. This feature was opt-in during Go 1.5. |
| Go 1.6 makes the vendor support the default, and it's likely that packages will start to use it soon. |
| |
| - `text/template` changes. |
| A long requested ability to [trim whitespace in templates](http://tip.golang.org/pkg/text/template/#hdr-Text_and_spaces) has arrived. This template |
| |
| `"{{23 -}} < {{- 45}}"` |
| |
| will produce this output |
| |
| `"23<45"` |
| |
| - cgo changes |
| |
| cgo continues to get stricter about sharing data between Go and C. http://tip.golang.org/cmd/cgo/#hdr-Passing_pointers |
| |
| Ian Lance Taylor has put a lot of work into making signal handling more sane. |
| |
| - More supported platforms. |
| Go 1.6 adds experimental ports to Linux on 64-bit MIPS (linux/mips64 and linux/mips64le). Note that this is 64 bit MIPS, not the older 32 bit MIPS commonly found in routers. |
| |
| 64-bit PowerPC (linux/ppc64le), Go 1.6 now supports cgo with external linking and is roughly feature complete. |
| |
| Go 1.6 also adds an experimental port to Android on 32-bit x86 (android/386). |
| |
| _Did you contribute to Go 1.6 and your contribution is not listed here? Edit this page and add some details about what you did._ |
| |
| ### What'll happen if Go 1.6 comes out early? |
| It'll ruin the surprise, but only a little. Being realistic, even without the difficulty of timezones it's impossible to run every meetup at exactly the same time. As mentioned above, Feb 17 is an arbitrary date. |
| |
| If you're a meetup organiser, Feb 17th would be great, but your participation is more important than being able to organise your group for exactly the 17th. |
| |
| ### What'll happen if Go 1.6 isn't out by the 17th? |
| Well ... at least we'll have each other. |
| |
| The feature set of Go 1.6 isn't going to change in the next few weeks. If Go 1.6 ships after the 17th, it will be a little anticlimactic that we jumped the gun, but it's not a big deal. |
| |
| ### Who's organising this? |
| Well, if you run a Go meetup, you are. It can't be a worldwide release party without meetups around the globe. |
| |
| #### No, seriously, who's organising this? |
| Here are the organisers so far: |
| - [Dave Cheney](mailto://dave@cheney.net) - @davecheney |
| - [Carlisia Campos](mailto://carlisia@golangbridge.org) - @carlisia |
| |
| _Want to help? Edit this page and add yourself_ |
| |
| If you have questions, please reach out to one of the organisers. |