Commit 56c4d0a5 authored by Rob Pike's avatar Rob Pike

doc/faq: update for 1.4

LGTM=iant
R=golang-codereviews, bradfitz, iant
CC=golang-codereviews
https://golang.org/cl/150190043
parent 4a8cb4a4
......@@ -889,6 +889,11 @@ type is generic; if you care about how many bits an integer holds, Go
encourages you to be explicit.
</p>
<p>
A blog post, title <a href="http://blog.golang.org/constants">Constants</a>,
explores this topic in more detail.
</p>
<h3 id="builtin_maps">
Why are maps built in?</h3>
<p>
......@@ -971,7 +976,7 @@ It is a handy reference for people doing code reviews for Go projects.
How do I submit patches to the Go libraries?</h3>
<p>
The library sources are in <code>go/src</code>.
The library sources are in the <code>src</code> directory of the repository.
If you want to make a significant change, please discuss on the mailing list before embarking.
</p>
......@@ -1590,30 +1595,40 @@ and uses a variant of the Plan 9 loader to generate ELF/Mach-O/PE binaries.
</p>
<p>
We considered writing <code>gc</code>, the original Go compiler, in Go itself but
We considered using LLVM for <code>gc</code> but we felt it was too large and
slow to meet our performance goals.
</p>
<p>
We also considered writing <code>gc</code>, the original Go compiler, in Go itself but
elected not to do so because of the difficulties of bootstrapping and
especially of open source distribution&mdash;you'd need a Go compiler to
set up a Go environment. <code>Gccgo</code>, which came later, makes it possible to
consider writing a compiler in Go, which might well happen.
(Go would be a
fine language in which to implement a compiler; a native lexer and
parser are already available in the <a href="/pkg/go/"><code>go</code></a> package
and a type checker is in the works.)
consider writing a compiler in Go.
A plan to do that by machine translation of the existing compiler is under development.
<a href="http://golang.org/s/go13compiler">A separate document</a>
explains the reason for this approach.
</p>
<p>
We also considered using LLVM for <code>gc</code> but we felt it was too large and
slow to meet our performance goals.
That plan aside,
Go is a
fine language in which to implement a self-hosting compiler: a native lexer and
parser are already available in the <a href="/pkg/go/"><code>go</code></a> package
and a separate type checking
<a href="http://godoc.org/code.google.com/p/go.tools/go/types">package</a>
has also been written.
</p>
<h3 id="How_is_the_run_time_support_implemented">
How is the run-time support implemented?</h3>
<p>
Again due to bootstrapping issues, the run-time code is mostly in C (with a
tiny bit of assembler) although Go is capable of implementing most of
it now. <code>Gccgo</code>'s run-time support uses <code>glibc</code>.
<code>Gc</code> uses a custom library to keep the footprint under
Again due to bootstrapping issues, the run-time code was originally written mostly in C (with a
tiny bit of assembler) although much of it has been translated to Go since then
and one day all of it might be (except for the assembler bits).
<code>Gccgo</code>'s run-time support uses <code>glibc</code>.
<code>Gc</code> uses a custom C library to keep the footprint under
control; it is
compiled with a version of the Plan 9 C compiler that supports
resizable stacks for goroutines.
......@@ -1637,8 +1652,8 @@ A simple C "hello, world" program compiled and linked statically using gcc
on Linux is around 750 kB,
including an implementation of <code>printf</code>.
An equivalent Go program using <code>fmt.Printf</code>
is around 1.2 MB, but
that includes more powerful run-time support.
is around 1.9 MB, but
that includes more powerful run-time support and type information.
</p>
<h3 id="unused_variables_and_imports">
......@@ -1695,6 +1710,14 @@ func main() {
}
</pre>
<p>
Nowadays, most Go programmers use a tool,
<a href="http://godoc.org/code.google.com/p/go.tools/cmd/goimports">goimports</a>,
which automatically rewrites a Go source file to have the correct imports,
eliminating the unused imports issue in practice.
This program is easily connected to most editors to run automatically when a Go source file is written.
</p>
<h2 id="Performance">Performance</h2>
<h3 id="Why_does_Go_perform_badly_on_benchmark_x">
......
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