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Comment by WhyNotHugo | Hacker News Reader

Anyone with an older toolchain can’t build that library of anything that depends on it.

Some environments might not even have the newer version available.

Anyone with an older toolchain is free to fork it on github, test with the older version, and CI to the project that tests with the older version, and submit a patch, too!

This may not get the project as many users, but not everyone who writes a 50 line project is trying to figure out which versions it supports and setting up full test matrices either.

Not a Go dev, but I typically set up a CI with the oldest toolchains I support (usually a debian release), and only bump those versions when I really need something from the latest versions. Locally I build with the most recent tools. This ensures good enough coverage for very little work, as I notice when I start using something that's newer and can bump the toolchain accordingly.

Sure, but if you start a new small project and throw it on GitHub, it's not totally insane to just put the version you tested. Just because someone put up their tiny library doesn't mean they've put in the effort to figure out which version they need.

Are you sure you replied to the right comment? I'm not sure how this relates to the question being asked.

I did.

If you have an older tool chain, it is on you to fix the library to build with the older tool chain, that's what open source is about!

Sorry, I have no idea what you're talking about. Please double check the message thread to which you're replying.

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