clarify purpose and use of the golang images

reading the anticensorship team minutes, it seems that they are unwilling or unable to use the golang images we produce here.

so we should figure out what to do with this. we've built those images at the request of @meskio in !32 (merged), but in team#42014 (comment 3159693), @shelikhoo said those images are not adequate. in the minutes, it is said the concern is with:

excessive patching and slow updates. shelikhoo prefers either to build our own golang from source (possibly on a Debian-based image), or else use a binary release of golang.

the above URL is from Debian stable, and shows a total of 5 patches, clearly labeled, touching a total of 12 files, with 31 inserted and 10 deleted lines. but that's from Debian stable. there are currently two patches against Golang 1.24, adding 8 lines of code to a single file, simply skipping "flaky tests".

So i feel that characterizing Debian's work on golang packaging as a "fork" is an exaggeration.

i will also point out that Golang 1.24, released two days ago, entered Debian today. so while Debian certainly has a reputation of being slow, but I don't think it's warranted in this case. We currently host, in this repository, the following debian-based golang images:

  • 1.15 (debian 11 bullseye, oldstable)
  • 1.19 (debian 12 bookworm, stable)
  • 1.23 (debian 13 trixie, testing, likely going to shift to 1.24 in a week or two)
  • 1.24 (debian sid, unstable)

So i think the concerns about the reliability, freshness, and divergence of the golang containers are overblown.

But if the ACT team doesn't want those containers, let's remove them!

I'm in a conflict of interest here, as I'm part of the debian golang team, so i'll remove myself from the conversation going forward, and will assign it to @lavamind, although I should point out that @lavamind is also a debian developer... if you feel uncomfortable with that, i can find a TPA person who's not a DD to service this issue, of course, but i think @lavamind is the best person to handle this.

Let us know what you think, anti-censorship people! 😄

If we do have to remove those containers, it might be worth auditing the git repos to see if the images are still in use anywhere.

/cc @meskio

Edited by anarcat