Backport to v23: Support Go 1.26 and later with Swiss maps always enabled (#19088)

[bcremer]

Description

Backport changes from https://github.com/vitessio/vitess/pull/19088/changes so consumers of vitess.io/vitess/go/vt/vitessdriver can update their applications to Go 1.26.

Related Issue(s)

• Related: https://github.com/vitessio/vitess/pull/19088/changes
• Fixes: Build fails with Go 1.26 rc1 #19087 (comment)

Checklist

• "Backport to:" labels have been added if this change should be back-ported to release branches
• If this change is to be back-ported to previous releases, a justification is included in the PR description
• Tests were added or are not required
• Did the new or modified tests pass consistently locally and on CI?
• Documentation was added or is not required

Deployment Notes

AI Disclosure

No AI was used, it's just a simple cherry-pick of an existing commit

git cherry-pick 28105fd7ba9defbda6f5827734f1cfa1b5c2b1c4

[vitess-bot]

Review Checklist

Hello reviewers! 👋 Please follow this checklist when reviewing this Pull Request.

General

• Ensure that the Pull Request has a descriptive title.
• Ensure there is a link to an issue (except for internal cleanup and flaky test fixes), new features should have an RFC that documents use cases and test cases.

Tests

• Bug fixes should have at least one unit or end-to-end test, enhancement and new features should have a sufficient number of tests.

Documentation

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• New features should be documented.
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• There should be a comment at the top of each new or modified test to explain what the test does.

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Backward compatibility

• Protobuf changes should be wire-compatible.
• Changes to _vt tables and RPCs need to be backward compatible.
• RPC changes should be compatible with vitess-operator
• If a flag is removed, then it should also be removed from vitess-operator and arewefastyet, if used there.
• vtctl command output order should be stable and awk-able.

[mattlord]

Thanks, @bcremer !

LGTM

❯ gh pr co 19367
remote: Enumerating objects: 3, done.
remote: Counting objects: 100% (3/3), done.
remote: Total 3 (delta 2), reused 3 (delta 2), pack-reused 0 (from 0)
Unpacking objects: 100% (3/3), 409 bytes | 102.00 KiB/s, done.
From github.com:vitessio/vitess
 * [new ref]               refs/pull/19367/head -> backport-19088-to-vitess-23
Switched to branch 'backport-19088-to-vitess-23'

❯ go version
go version go1.26.0 darwin/arm64

❯ make build
Thu Feb 12 06:33:23 UTC 2026: Building source tree

❯ vtgate --version
vtgate version Version: 23.0.3-SNAPSHOT (Git revision 2257942442cefaf7bbb880d93a9b382a1e9fbd82 branch 'backport-19088-to-vitess-23') built on Thu Feb 12 06:33:23 UTC 2026 by matt@pslord.local using go1.26.0 darwin/arm64

[codecov]

Codecov Report

✅ All modified and coverable lines are covered by tests.
✅ Project coverage is 69.71%. Comparing base (7c76856) to head (2257942).
⚠️ Report is 11 commits behind head on release-23.0.

Additional details and impacted files

@@               Coverage Diff                @@
##           release-23.0   #19367      +/-   ##
================================================
- Coverage         69.73%   69.71%   -0.02%     
================================================
  Files              1606     1606              
  Lines            214823   214851      +28     
================================================
- Hits             149798   149778      -20     
- Misses            65025    65073      +48     

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[arthurschreiber]

Should we backport this to v22 as well?