Go 1.16.7, 1.15.15 Minor Releases and Go 1.17 RC2 Feature Highlights

The Go development team has recently released updates for three branches: Go 1.16.7, Go 1.15.15, and Go 1.17 RC2.

Go 1.16.7 and 1.15.15 are minor releases that primarily address security issues in accordance with the new security policy.

Go 1.16.7 includes security fixes for the net/http/httputil package and bug fixes for the compiler, linker, runtime, the go command, and the net/http package.

Go 1.15.15 contains the same fixes as 1.16.7.

Release notes: https://golang.org/doc/devel/release#go1.16.minor .

Go 1.17 is scheduled for final release this month, making RC2 the last release candidate before the official launch.

Go 1.17 introduces three language feature improvements:

Support conversion from a slice to an array pointer.

unsafe.Add : unsafe.Add(ptr, len) adds len to ptr and returns the updated pointer unsafe.Pointer(uintptr(ptr) + uintptr(len)) .

unsafe.Slice : for a *T pointer, unsafe.Slice(ptr, len) returns a []T slice whose underlying array starts at ptr with length and capacity equal to len .

Additionally, Go 1.17 requires macOS 10.13 High Sierra or later on Mac, adds support for 64‑bit ARM on Windows, and adds support for 64‑bit MIPS on OpenBSD.