This report details an experience I had while writing an RPC system in Go. While Go’s standard I/O libraries make a great many things simple, I found cancellation to be more complex than I would have liked. Parts of this situation have improved in the last couple of Go releases (as I have noted below). I hope this positive trend continues in a way that allows the Go ecosystem to easily propagate cancellation, deadlines, and request values. My intent in this report — as well as the proposal I created back in May 2017 — is to give background and feedback to inform future design decisions. Suggestions for solutions welcome!

(Thanks to Ian Lance Taylor, Damien Neil, Cassandra Salisbury, and Andrew Bonventre for reviewing this report for accuracy and clarity.)