<!--{
	"Title": "The Go Programming Language Specification",
	"Subtitle": "Language version go1.17 (Oct 15, 2021)",
	"Path": "/ref/spec"
}-->

<h2 id="Introduction">Introduction</h2>

<p>
This is the reference manual for the Go programming language as it was for
language version 1.17, in October 2021, before the introduction of generics.
It is provided for historical interest.

## Ports {#ports}

### Linux {#linux}

As [announced](go1.23#linux) in the Go 1.23 release notes, Go 1.24 requires Linux
kernel version 3.2 or later.

### WebAssembly {#wasm}

## Compiler {#compiler}

## Assembler {#assembler}

## Linker {#linker}

## Bootstrap {#bootstrap}

<!-- go.dev/issue/64751 -->
As mentioned in the [Go 1.22 release notes](/doc/go1.22#bootstrap), Go 1.24 now requires
Go 1.22.6 or later for bootstrap.

	// final release step of cat next/*.txt >go1.X.txt.
	// If the files don't end in full lines, the concatenation goes awry.
	if strings.Contains(s, "\r") {
		log.Printf("%s: contains CRLFs", filename)
		exitCode = 1
	}
	if filepath.Base(filename) == "go1.4.txt" {
		// No use for blank lines in api files, except go1.4.txt
		// used them in a reasonable way and we should let it be.

not the older version.

To override these defaults, starting in Go 1.23, the work module's `go.mod`
or the workspace's `go.work` can list one or more `godebug` lines:

	godebug (
		default=go1.21
		panicnil=1
		asynctimerchan=0
	)

The special key `default` indicates a Go version to take unspecified
settings from. This allows setting the GODEBUG defaults separately

```sh
go install github.com/minio/minio@latest
```

		file: "testdata/issue11169.tar",
		err:  ErrHeader,
	}, {
		file: "testdata/issue12435.tar",
		err:  ErrHeader,
	}, {
		// Ensure that we can read back the original Header as written with
		// a buggy pre-Go1.8 tar.Writer.
		file: "testdata/invalid-go17.tar",
		headers: []*Header{{
			Name:     "aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa/foo",
			Uid:      010000000,

<!--{
	"Title": "The Go Programming Language Specification",
	"Subtitle": "Language version go1.23 (Oct 1, 2024)",
	"Path": "/ref/spec"
}-->

<h2 id="Introduction">Introduction</h2>

<p>
This is the reference manual for the Go programming language.
The pre-Go1.18 version, without generics, can be found
<a href="/doc/go1.17_spec.html">here</a>.
For more information and other documents, see <a href="/">go.dev</a>.
</p>

<p>