Compiling Go Application - Go Binary

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To make the binary file even more suitable to run in a container, you can pass additional build options. For example, you’ll enable a statically linked binary by setting CGO_ENABLED=0, and you can pass additional linker options using the flag -ldflags. To reduce the binary size, use the options -ldflags=”-s -w” to strip the binary of debug symbols. Some of the build options that you’ll use1:

  • CGO_ENABLED=0: Enables statically linked binaries to make the application more portable. It allows you to use the binary with source images that don’t support shared libraries when building your container image.
  • GOOS=linux: Since containers run Linux, set this option to enable repeatable builds even when building the application on a different platform.
  • -ldflags=”-s -w”: The parameter -ldflags allows you to specify additional linker options that go build uses at the link stage of the build process. In this case, the option -s -w strips the binary of debugging symbols, decreasing its size. Without these symbols, it’s harder to debug the application, but this is usually not a major concern when running in a container. To see all linker options you can use, run go tool link.
  • -tags=containers: This is specific to your own application.

Build your binary using these options:

CGO_ENABLED=0 GOOS=linux go build -ldflags="-s -w" -tags=containers

Once you have the binary, you’ll create a container image by using a Dockerfile.

Possible platforms for GOOS and GOARCH 

# uname (short for unix name) is a computer program in Unix and Unix-like
# computer operating systems that prints the name, version and other details
# about the current machine and the operating system running on it
uname
uname -a
# how to detect 386, amd64, arm, or arm64 OS architecture:
uname -m

# how to see golang list of GOOS and GOARCH
# https://go.dev/doc/install/source#environment
# https://gist.github.com/asukakenji/f15ba7e588ac42795f421b48b8aede63
go tool dist list
go tool dist list -json

env GOOS=target-OS GOARCH=target-architecture go build package-import-path -o my-app

env GOOS=darwin GOARCH=amd64 go build -o main-darwin-amd64 main.go
env GOOS=darwin GOARCH=arm64 go build -o main-darwin-arm64 main.go
env GOOS=ios GOARCH=amd64 go build -o main-ios-amd64 main.go
env GOOS=ios GOARCH=arm64 go build -o main-ios-arm64 main.go

Build a library for Android and iOS

resource:

gomobile build -target ios -o main-ios main.go

  1. Compiling Your Go Application for Containers ↩