Status of the Go Micro project and future plans?

[BombartSimon]

Hi team,

I've been following the Go Micro project and recently noticed that several repositories were archived on May 7th. Additionally, I saw a PR aiming to move plugins back into the main repository.

This has raised some questions for me regarding the current state and future of the project. Is Go Micro still actively maintained? Are there any plans or a roadmap for its development moving forward?

As a user/developer relying on this framework, I'd really appreciate some clarity on whether the project is evolving, being sunsetted, or transitioning in some way.

Thanks in advance for any insights you can share!

Best regards,
Simon Bombart

[vtolstov]

i don't have answers, i'm maintain fork https://pkg.go.dev/go.unistack.org/micro/v4
mostly we have some big users and 3-4 active developers and many testers, so we can move forward.

[asim]

Thanks for your questions @BombartSimon. We have assessed the state of the framework after quite a period and realised that it is difficult to maintain all those plugins, in fact, very few people contribute to them and some of them are now no longer compatible with recent versions of software changes. The state of software development has also drastically changed. Tools have evolved. With Go Micro we're now looking to restart with a fresh perspective. We are going to maintain 2-3 plugins that we think are key, in Go Micro itself. We're then going to slowly bring back things like the API and CLI as it makes sense. But overall the goal is to have a smaller set of features and plugins that's easier to maintain and then focus on developer workflow around that, code generation, etc. Please let us know what your usecase is, what plugins you need, etc and we'll try to help.

[BombartSimon]

Thanks for your response! @asim

I use Go Micro in a professional context as part of my work, since we deploy our microservices in Kubernetes. Recently, we migrated from v4 to v5, and I attempted to use the transport/grpc plugin. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to import it due to an API compatibility error with Go Micro.

I appreciate the work being done to streamline and maintain the core of the framework. Let me know if there’s anything I can contribute or test to help with the transition.

[asim]

What was the incompatibility error?

[BombartSimon]

The incompatibility error I encountered was the following:

github.com/micro/plugins/v5/transport/grpc imports
    github.com/micro/plugins/v5/transport/grpc/proto imports
    go-micro.dev/v5/api: go-micro.dev/v5/api@v1.18.0: parsing go.mod:
    module declares its path as: github.com/micro/go-micro
            but was required as: go-micro.dev/v5/api

It seems like there's a mismatch between the module path declared in go.mod (github.com/micro/go-micro) and the one expected by the plugin (go-micro.dev/v5/api). This prevents me from using the transport/grpc plugin under Go Micro v5.

Let me know if there's a workaround or if I should consider another approach. Thanks again!

[asim]

Yea I understand this problem. I thought you meant the client/server not the transport.

I have fixed that in this PR and moved the plugin directly into go-micro. Will this satisfy the request?

#2758

[asim]

I think if you now just import go-micro.dev/v5/transport/grpc at master that should work.

[BombartSimon]

Thanks again for the suggestion.

I updated my code to import the plugin like this:

package utils

import (
    // Transport plugins
    _ "go-micro.dev/v5/transport/grpc"
)

However, I'm still getting the same error:

go: finding module for package go-micro.dev/v5/transport/grpc
go: found go-micro.dev/v5/transport/grpc in go-micro.dev/v5/transport/grpc v1.18.0
go: git.sourse.tech/ground-station/go_pathfinderservice/pkg/utils imports
        go-micro.dev/v5/transport/grpc: go-micro.dev/v5/transport/grpc@v1.18.0: parsing go.mod:
        module declares its path as: github.com/micro/go-micro
                but was required as: go-micro.dev/v5/transport/grpc

So it looks like the module path in go.mod is still declared as github.com/micro/go-micro, while the import expects go-micro.dev/v5/....

Let me know if I should be using a specific branch or version to get the correct module path.

[asim]

So try GOPROXY=direct go get go-micro.dev/v5/transport/grpc@master

And if that doesn't work then I'm going to have to change the module name I think

Might also need to try without @master.

[BombartSimon]

Thanks again for the suggestion — I tried the following:

GOPROXY=direct go get go-micro.dev/v5/transport/grpc@master

Unfortunately, it still doesn't work. The error I get is:

go: module go-micro.dev/v5@master found (v5.5.1-0.20250514200442-230505bf5a6a), but does not contain package go-micro.dev/v5/transport/grpc

And without @master, it still pulls version v1.18.0, which causes the same go.mod path mismatch error:

module declares its path as: github.com/micro/go-micro
but was required as: go-micro.dev/v5/transport/grpc

Sorry, but it seems the issue persists. Let me know if you end up updating the module name — I’d be happy to test it again right after. Thanks for your time and support!!

[asim]

Try GOPROXY=direct go get go-micro.dev/v5@master

If that doesn't work I'll hop on my laptop in 15 mins to fix it

[BombartSimon]

I tried that — the go get with GOPROXY=direct completed without any errors.

However, when I run go mod tidy afterwards, the same issue comes back:

go: finding module for package go-micro.dev/v5/transport/grpc
go: found go-micro.dev/v5/transport/grpc in go-micro.dev/v5/transport/grpc v1.18.0
go: git.sourse.tech/ground-station/go_pathfinderservice/pkg/utils imports
    go-micro.dev/v5/transport/grpc: go-micro.dev/v5/transport/grpc@v1.18.0: parsing go.mod:
    module declares its path as: github.com/micro/go-micro
            but was required as: go-micro.dev/v5/transport/grpc

Let me know if you manage to patch it — I really appreciate your help!

[asim]

I'm going to strip the separate go mods. I'm finding it quite annoying to manage/use. We might see some default go mod bloat but will just have to deal with it for now. I was never happy with all the separate tagging the plugins repo either. Its very convoluted.

I've tested it locally. If you now get the latest master it should work.

So back to GOPROXY=direct go get go-micro.dev/v5@master

[BombartSimon]

Awesome — in that case, we're fully on board! 🚀

Our company is sourse.eu
We work in the field of earth observation, including embedded Kubernetes running onboard aircraft, and we’ve built a mission management SaaS platform using Go Micro.

Happy to be listed as a user, and definitely open to contributing further as the project evolves. Thanks again for keeping it open source and for all your work on this!

[asim]

Added to the Go Micro readme since that seems like the most relevant place.

#2759

[BombartSimon]

I agree — the Go Micro README is probably the best place for now 👍
Maybe one day we could imagine having an official Go Micro website with full documentation and a section for active users as well 😉

[asim]

I think that makes sense, I'm sure we'll do it at some point. I always found writing docs hard. Go Cloud might be a good example of how to do it in a simple way. Eventually I would like a bunch of different useful tools around Go Micro e.g like a service runner. I find the complexity of managing services is still frustrating and kubernetes is a bit overkill.

[BombartSimon]

Yeah, that makes sense — and totally agree that writing docs can be tough.
There are actually quite a few Hugo themes that work really well for documentation — clean, simple, and easy to maintain. This post on the Hugo forum lists several good options that could be a lightweight starting point if you ever go down that road.

Also agree on the service management side — Kubernetes does the job, but can definitely feel like overkill for smaller setups. A simple service runner around Go Micro sounds like a great idea 👌