cmd/go: go get fails with git version 1.7.1 on CentOS 6.9

[adam8157]

What version of Go are you using (go version)?

$ go version
go version go1.11.1 linux/amd64

What did you do?

Just go get something with the Modules mode

What happened?

go: unknown revision xxxxxxxx
go: error loading module requirements

Root cause

git command below is what go get -x shows.

$ git -c log.showsignature=false log -n1 '--format=format:%H %ct %D' xxxxxxxx
Unknown option: -c
usage: git [--version] [--exec-path[=GIT_EXEC_PATH]] [--html-path]
           [-p|--paginate|--no-pager] [--no-replace-objects]
           [--bare] [--git-dir=GIT_DIR] [--work-tree=GIT_WORK_TREE]
           [--help] COMMAND [ARGS]

$ git version
git version 1.7.1

$ cat /etc/*issue
CentOS release 6.9 (Final)

[agnivade]

Actually, we added the -c log.showsignature=false to support git versions lower than 2.10. 90066bf

Most recent systems have 2.7.4. Git 1.7 seems to have been released on 2010. Not sure how far back are we willing to go to support git versions. Perhaps it goes back to @bcmills' comment here to explicitly specify a minimum git version.

/cc @bcmills @rsc

[thepudds]

#26746 tracks defining a minimum support version of git (or perhaps instead a set of supported distro versions).

One comment from there:

The table at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Git#Release says that Git 2.12 and older are themselves no longer maintained.

1.7 is pretty old.

@adam8157 are you able to upgrade your version of git?

[rasky]

FWIW, git -c was added in git 1.7.2:
git/git@8b1fa77

[bcmills]

According to the table at https://wiki.centos.org/About/Product, CentOS6 is currently on version 6.10. Any idea whether that comes with a newer Git?

[ianlancetaylor]

Looks like it is still git 1.7.1.

Since CentOS is intended to be long term stable, they are unlikely to update anything except to fix bugs.

[adam8157]

This happens on my testing env which is the same as my deployment env, it's OK to upgrade. However, I guess CentOS/RHEL 6 is still a big player, especially as the production OS, in the Linux world.

[bcmills]

As a workaround, note that you can set GOPROXY=https://proxy.golang.org to fetch using HTTPS instead of Git.

[seankhliao]

I believe this can be closed with CentOS 6 having reached EOL on 2020-11-30

Current policy is at #26746 (comment)