github.com/micro/go-micro

Go-micro provides an opinionated microservices framework with service discovery, RPC, and pub/sub built-in. The initial appeal is strong - you can spin up services quickly with minimal boilerplate. However, the day-to-day reality is frustrating. The v1.18.0 version is frozen in time from 2019, and the project underwent a controversial fork to v2/v3 under different import paths, creating massive ecosystem fragmentation.

The documentation is a significant pain point. Examples often reference APIs that changed between versions, and it's unclear which version docs apply to. Error messages are cryptic - registry connection failures give you generic "service not found" errors that don't help pinpoint whether it's consul misconfiguration, network issues, or service registration problems. Debugging requires diving into source code regularly.

Community support has fractured post-fork. GitHub issues on the original repo went unanswered for months, and Stack Overflow questions often get outdated responses. When things work, they work well, but when you hit issues (especially around service discovery or middleware), you're largely on your own. The learning curve is steep not because of complexity, but because of documentation gaps and version confusion.

Go-micro provides an ambitious microservices framework with service discovery, RPC, pub/sub, and pluggable transports. In practice, the abstraction layer adds significant complexity. The default timeouts are aggressive (5s request timeout) and require careful tuning under load. Connection pooling exists but behavior varies wildly between transport implementations (HTTP vs gRPC vs NATS).

The biggest operational concern is project abandonment. Version 1.18.0 from 2019 is the last in the v1 line, while v2+ moved to a different module path with massive breaking changes and licensing shifts. This creates a nightmare for dependency management. Error handling is inconsistent - some transport errors retry automatically, others bubble up immediately, making debugging production issues frustrating.

Resource cleanup requires explicit Close() calls on services and clients, but documentation rarely emphasizes this, leading to connection leaks. The logging interface is pluggable but defaults to stdout with no structured logging, making observability integration require boilerplate. Memory usage spikes under connection churn due to how the registry client maintains service metadata.

Go-micro provides a comprehensive microservices toolkit with service discovery, RPC, pub/sub, and more out of the box. The abstraction layer for different registries (Consul, etcd, mDNS) and brokers is elegant, and the protoc plugin generates clean service interfaces. However, the project has significant baggage that makes it challenging for production use.

The v1.18.0 version reviewed here was the last before a major v2 rewrite that introduced breaking changes across the entire API surface. The maintainer then moved to a v3 with a commercial licensing shift, fracturing the community. Documentation frequently references outdated APIs, and examples don't run without modification. Error messages are often generic 'selector error' or 'encoding error' strings that require diving into source code to debug.

Type safety is reasonable with generated protobuf code, but the framework's heavy use of interface{} and options patterns means IDE autocomplete struggles with configuration. The middleware system is powerful but underdocumented, requiring reading examples from other projects to understand patterns.