Go package guidelines
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This document covers standards and guidelines on writing PKGBUILDs for Go.
General guidelines
Package naming
For Go library modules, use go-modulename
. Also use the prefix if the package provides a program that is strongly coupled to the Go ecosystem. For other applications, use only the program name.
Instructions for alternative dependency managers
This is not needed for Go 1.11 and later, unless an alternative dependency manager is required by the Go project you are packaging.
When preparing the sources before building, the following may be needed:
- Create a directory
$srcdir/gopath
for $GOPATH and copy over the source to this directory. - It should be noted that this step might not be needed if the project provides a
Makefile
for the project that sets this up.
prepare(){ mkdir -p gopath/src/github.com/pkgbuild-example ln -rTsf $pkgname-$pkgver gopath/src/github.com/pkgbuild-example/$pkgname # the dependencies can be fetched here if needed cd gopath/src/github.com/pkgbuild-example/$pkgname dep ensure }
Building
There are two go packages in the repositories that you can build towards; go and go-pie. All packages should preferably be built towards go-pie as this enables us to deliver secure binaries. However, as upstream might have bugs, building towards go should be a last resort.
Flags and build options
Most Makefiles written for go applications do not respect the LDFLAGS
provided by build systems, this causes Go binaries to not be compiled with RELRO. This needs to be patched into the Makefile, or the Makefile should be omitted. If there is an Makefile involved, you have 3 options to support RELRO.
- Patch Makefile
- Skip Makefile completely and use
go build
- Export
GOFLAGS
- This is less desirable as we are dropping flags fromLDFLAGS
.
For reproducible builds it's important that the binaries are stripped of the build path using the -trimpath
flags.
# LDFLAGS into the GOFLAGS env variable. export GOFLAGS="-gcflags=all=-trimpath=${PWD} -asmflags=all=-trimpath=${PWD} -ldflags=-extldflags=-zrelro -ldflags=-extldflags=-znow" # or alternatively use LDFLAGS defined in go build. go build \ -gcflags "all=-trimpath=${PWD}" \ -asmflags "all=-trimpath=${PWD}" \ -ldflags "-extldflags ${LDFLAGS}" \ .
Modern Go projects (for Go >=1.11)
Go 1.11 introduces go modules. This omits the need to setup GOPATH
and we can build directly in the directory.
Projects like these have a go.mod
and a go.sum
file.
$PWD
stripped from the binary.build(){ cd "$pkgname-$pkgver" go build . }
Old Go projects (for Go <1.11)
When building go packages with $GOPATH there are a few problems one can encounter. Usually the project delivers a Makefile
that can be used and should be used. There are cases where you still need to setup a $GOPATH
in the PKGBUILD. The following snippet sets up an appropriate GOPATH
inside $srcdir/gopath
one can use to build packages. A new directory is used as some go dependency managers do weird things if they discover the project in the root of the $GOPATH
.
$GOPATH
stripped from the binary.prepare(){ mkdir -p gopath/src/github.com/pkgbuild-example ln -rTsf $pkgname-$pkgver gopath/src/github.com/pkgbuild-example/$pkgname export GOPATH="$srcdir"/gopath # the dependencies can be fetched here if needed cd gopath/src/github.com/pkgbuild-example/$pkgname dep ensure } build(){ export GOPATH="$srcdir"/gopath cd gopath/src/github.com/pkgbuild-example/$pkgname go install -v . }
Note that install
and build
and can do recursive builds if you have a cmd/
subdirectory with multiple binaries: go install -v github.com/pkgbuild-example/cmd/...
Notes about dependencies and dependency managers
Go packages currently use the vendor/
folder to handle dependencies in projects. These are usually managed by one of several dependency manager projects. If one is used for the package, this step should be performed in the prepare() function of the PKGBUILD.
Dependencies are normally managed by the go mod
command, that comes with Go 1.11 or later.
There are also alternative dependency managers:
Sample PKGBUILDs
Basic PKGBUILD
pkgname=foo pkgver=0.0.1 pkgrel=1 pkgdesc='Go PKGBUILD Example' arch=('x86_64') url="https://example.org/$pkgname" license=('GPL') makedepends=('go-pie') source=("$url/$pkgname-$pkgver.tar.gz") sha256sums=('1337deadbeef') build() { cd $pkgname-$pkgver go build \ -gcflags "all=-trimpath=$PWD" \ -asmflags "all=-trimpath=$PWD" \ -ldflags "-extldflags $LDFLAGS" \ -o $pkgname . } package() { cd $pkgname-$pkgver install -Dm755 $pkgname "$pkgdir"/usr/bin/$pkgname }
PKGBUILD with GOPATH and dep
pkgname=foo pkgver=0.0.1 pkgrel=1 pkgdesc='Go PKGBUILD Example' arch=('x86_64') url='https://example.org/$pkgname' license=('GPL') makedepends=('go-pie' 'dep') source=("$url/$pkgname-$pkgver.tar.gz") sha256sums=('1337deadbeef') prepare(){ mkdir -p gopath/src/example.org/foo ln -rTsf $pkgname-$pkgver gopath/src/example.org/foo export GOPATH="$srcdir"/gopath cd gopath/src/example.org/foo dep ensure } build() { export GOPATH="$srcdir"/gopath cd gopath/src/example.org/foo go install \ -gcflags "all=-trimpath=$GOPATH" \ -asmflags "all=-trimpath=$GOPATH" \ -ldflags "-extldflags $LDFLAGS" \ -v ./... } check() { export GOPATH="$srcdir"/gopath cd gopath/src/example.org/foo go test ./... } package() { install -Dm755 gopath/bin/$pkgname "$pkgdir"/usr/bin/$pkgname }