I'm fairly sure Go Modules does not support what you’re describing. It specifically avoided having a SAT solver (or something similar), unlike most package managers. You specify a minimum version, and that’s it. 1.8 would be selected because it is the highest minimum version out of the options 1.5 and 1.8 that the dependencies require. Unless you edit your go.mod file to require an even higher version, which is an option. Alternatively, you can always replace that transitive dependency with your own fork that fixes the problems, using a “replace” directive in your go.mod file.
If your dependencies are as broken as you’re describing, you’re in for a world of hurt no matter the solution. I also can't remember ever encountering that situation.
Well after 12 years of using ruby and bundler and maintaining a bundler-ish depsolver at work, and playing around a bit with cargo, I can say that it is becoming clearer as to why I don't grok go modules at all.
The lack of a depsolver is a curious choice...
I don't think my example was remotely "broken" at all, that's just another day doing software development.
> I don't think my example was remotely "broken" at all, that's just another day doing software development.
It's not the norm for me. If this is what you consider to be the norm, then this kind of statement doesn't make me feel any better about Ruby.
I will say that Bundler is one of the better package managers, but the existence of the constraint solver doesn't fix this problem -- Bundler doesn't allow you to have multiple versions of a single dependency. The problem is fundamentally the dependency not maintaining its compatibility guarantees, which I would definitely call "broken". Sometimes breakage is unavoidable, like with security fixes that you want to be available even to users of existing SemVer versions, but it should not be a common situation.
If your dependencies are as broken as you’re describing, you’re in for a world of hurt no matter the solution. I also can't remember ever encountering that situation.