[matt_m]

Well, the article calls for a v0, which seems to be exactly for the use case you describe? There are no import path changes, undergoing "rapid, breaking change" is allowed, and if you ever find a good local optimum you can graduate to v1 without any import path change either. I don't see any requirement to ever move to v1, although users may understandably prefer libraries that do. I don't quite understand what additional support you are looking for from "a good package manager".

I'm also not sure this makes it harder to ship a v2. Sure, users will have to change their import paths, although I'm sure tooling like GoLand can easily automate this. But this also frees library maintainers to do extensive API redesigns, without worrying about breaking everything or hanging their existing users out to dry. In particular, the ability to make v1 depend on (and become a wrapper for) v2 is quite nice. Not only does this pattern not break existing code, but it even allows users who have not yet migrated to the new API to benefit from the active development on the latest branch. And of course there is the potential for some degree of automated migration, through inlining wrapper functions as mentioned in the article.