On Fri, May 13, 2022 at 1:23 AM quin...@gmail.com <quint...@gmail.com> wrote: > > I have 3 years of experience writing go, but decades of writing C. I am > reaching for best practices on using package private variables to implement > signleton packages. > > I work on a fairly large microservice project which uses protobufs over NATS > for communication and ETCd for a key/val store etc. We have put together a > repository of packages (a lbrary in C terms) of microservice support tools > which mop up much common code in the microservices. > > There is a precident for implementing such libraries using a package private > variable to store the package's state (singletons) - the obvious example is > log (https://cs.opensource.google/go/go/+/refs/tags/go1.18.2:src/log/log.go > line 87, var std) > > Doing this means our microservice code is a little cleaner but does hide some > non-obvious "magic" in the library. The alternative is the microservices all > need to create a set of global variables for the packages they reference and > use those; which feels like unnecessary syntactic sugar. > > I understand that this technique restricts the package to a single instance, > however in this case this is fine; we never need more than one connection to > NATS or ETCd. > > I have read various blogs which argue one way or the other, do the Go authors > (or any other esteemed authority) have any strong opinions to offer? Am I > committing a crime against go, or am I using the power of the language to > cleanly implement a feature?
Go has global variables because sometimes it's easier to use a global variable. The benefits and drawbacks are clear, and you already mentioned them. Go is a pragmatic language. Make the right choice for your environment. Using global variables is not a crime. Ian -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "golang-nuts" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to golang-nuts+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/golang-nuts/CAOyqgcV6Jg5D--W4vUy_0Non6Sow5K4VsrcBP%3D%3DA8QM2cx3XQA%40mail.gmail.com.
