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go-libyear

Calculate Go module's libyear!

go-recipes

Install

Use pre-built binaries from the latest release or install with Go:

go install github.com/nieomylnieja/go-libyear/cmd/go-libyear@latest

It can also be built directly from this repository:

git clone https://github.com/nieomylnieja/go-libyear.git
cd go-libyear
make build
./bin/go-libyear ./go.mod

Docker

Docker images hosted on GitHub Container Registry are also provided:

docker pull ghcr.io/nieomylnieja/go-libyear:latest
docker run --rm ghcr.io/nieomylnieja/go-libyear -p github.com/nieomylnieja/go-libyear

Usage

go-libyear can be used both as a CLI and Go library. The CLI usage is also documented in usage.txt and accessed through go-libyear --help.

Basic usage:

$ go-libyear /path/to/go.mod
package                             version  date        latest   latest_date  libyear
github.com/nieomylnieja/go-libyear           2023-11-06                        2.41
github.com/pkg/errors               v0.8.1   2019-01-03  v0.9.1   2020-01-14   1.03
github.com/urfave/cli/v2            v2.20.0  2022-10-14  v2.25.7  2023-06-14   0.67
golang.org/x/mod                    v0.12.0  2023-06-21  v0.14.0  2023-10-25   0.35
golang.org/x/sync                   v0.3.0   2023-06-01  v0.5.0   2023-10-11   0.36

Calculated metrics

Libyear

What exactly is libyear? Quoting and paraphrasing libyear.com:

Libyear is a simple measure of software dependency freshness.
It is a single number telling you how up-to-date your dependencies are.
Example: pkg/errors v0.8.1 (June 2019) is 1 libyear behind v0.9.0 (June 2020).

Libyear is the default metric calculated by the program.

Example:

Current Current release Latest Latest release Libyear
v1.45.1 2022-10-11 v2.0.5 2023-10-11 1
v1.46.0 2022-12-04 v2.0.5 2023-10-11 0.85
v2.0.0 2023-10-01 v2.0.5 2022-10-11 0.03

Number of releases

Dependencies with short release cycles are penalized by this measurement, as the version sequence distance is relatively high compared to other dependencies.

Example:

Versions
v1.45.1
v1.45.2
v1.46.0
v2.0.0
v2.0.1
Current Latest Delta
v1.45.1 v2.0.5 5

Version number delta

Version delta is a tuple (x,y,z) where:

  • x is major version
  • y is minor version
  • z is patch version

Only highest-order version number is taken into consideration.

Example:

Current Latest Delta
v1.45.1 v2.0.5 (1,0,0)
v1.45.1 v1.47.5 (0,2,0)
v1.45.1 v.45.5 (0,0,4)

Results manipulation

Flag Explanation
--releases Count number of releases between current and latest.
--versions Calculate version number delta between current and latest.
--indirect Include indirect dependencies in the results.
--skip-fresh Skip up-to-date dependencies from the results.
--find-latest-major Use next, greater than or equal to v2 version as the latest.

Module sources

Source Flag Example
File path default ~/my-project/go.mod
URL --url https://raw.githubusercontent.com/nieomylnieja/go-libyear/main/go.mod
Module path --pkg github.com/nieomylnieja/go-libyear@latest

Output formats

Format Flag
Table default
JSON --json
CSV --csv

Historical data

In order to calculate the metrics in a given point in time, use --age-limit flag. Example:

go-libyear --age-limit 2022-10-01T12:00:00Z ./go.mod

The latest version for each package will be appointed as the latest version of the package before or at the provided timestamp.

The flag works any other flag. If using a script to extract a history of the calculated metrics, it is recommended to use --cache flag as well.

Caching

go-libyear ships with a built-in caching mechanism. It is disabled by default but can be enabled and adjusted with the following flags:

Flag Explanation
--cache Enable caching.
--cache-file-path Use the specified file for caching.
--vcs-cache-dir Use custom cache path for VCS modules.

Go versioning

By default go-libyear will fetch the latest version for the current major version adhering to the following rules:

  • If the current major version is equal to 0.x.x and there's version 1.x.x available, set the latest to 1.x.x.
  • If the current major is equal to or greater than 1.x.x, set the latest to 1.x.x.

If you wish to always set the next major version as the latest, you can use the --find-latest-major (short -M) flag. This flag enforces the following rules:

  • If the current major is equal to or greater than x.x.x, set the latest to the latest (by semver) available version.

  • If the latest major version is greater than the current major and the current version has been published after the first version of the latest major, the libyear is calculated as a difference between the first version of the latest major and latest major version.

    Example:

    Current version is 1.21.9 (2024-02-01), latest is 2.0.5 (2024-01-19);
    1.21.9 was a security fix, it still means we're some time behind v2;
    2.0.0 was released on 2024-01-02, this means we're 17 days (2024-01-19 - 2024-01-02) behind the latest v2, despite the fact that we've updated to the latest security patch for v1.

If you wish to not compensate for such cases and leave libyear as is (it won't be ever negative, we round it to 0 if negative), use the --no-libyear-compensation flag.

The modules reference states that:

If the module is released at major version 2 or higher, the module path must end with a major version suffix like /v2.

This is however not always the case, some older projects, usually pre-module, might not adhere to that. The aforementioned flag also works with such scenarios.

Caveats

Accessing private repositories

Currently the default mode of execution only supports git VCS and GitHub source. To access all private modules use --go-list flag. It will instruct the program to utilize go list command instead of GOPROXY API.

Using --go-list flag

If --go-list flag is provided, go-libyear will used go list command to fetch information about modules. Specifically it runs go list -m -mod=readonly. If the program is executed in a project containing a go.mod which go.sum file is out of sync, it will drop the following error:

updates to go.sum needed, disabled by -mod=readonly

Due to that it is advised to stick with default modules information provider.

Development

CLI application is tested with bats framework. The tests are defined in test folder. Only core calculations are covered by unit tests, main paths are tested through CLI tests.

Acknowledgements

Inspired directly by SE Radio episode 587. Further reading through libyear.com and mimicking libyear-bundler capabilities.

All the concepts and theory is based on or directly quoted from Measuring Dependency Freshness in Software Systems.