gRPC wrong types context and Go 1.7

Sep 28, 2016 - Golang

If you are following Go development you probably know that:
Go 1.7 moves the golang.org/x/net/context package into the standard library as context, Yeah !
Unfortunately it won’t work for everything, I’ve spent some time understanding this one.

For example if you are using gRPC you can hit this problem, here is an interface generated by gRPC:

type APRSServer interface {
    GetPastMessages(context.Context, *Point) (*ARPSMessages, error)
}

But when compiling:

/main.go:153: cannot use &s (type *Server) as type protorpc.APRSServer in argument to protorpc.RegisterAPRSServer:                                                                           
        *Server does not implement protorpc.APRSServer (wrong type for GetPastMessages method)                                                                                                
                have GetPastMessages("context".Context, *protorpc.Point) (*protorpc.ARPSMessages, error)                                                                                      
                want GetPastMessages("golang.org/x/net/context".Context, *protorpc.Point) (*protorpc.ARPSMessages, error)

The compiler is complaining about wrong types for the context argument.
Problem is gRPC generated code is importing context as golang.org/x/net/context, that’s the only way it remains compatible between Go 1.6 & Go 1.7.

So a quick solution is to import context in your own code to use the old path:

// we have to use the old context path here for gRPC compat see https://github.com/grpc/grpc-go/issues/711
context "golang.org/x/net/context"

Also note that go tool fix is now capable of fixing the import path with -force context.

See Also