Go package guidelines
32-bit – CLR – CMake – Cross – DKMS – Eclipse – Electron – Font – Free Pascal – GNOME – Go – Haskell – Java – KDE – Kernel modules – Lisp – Meson – MinGW – Node.js – Nonfree – OCaml – Perl – PHP – Python – R – Ruby – Rust - Security – Shell – VCS – Web – Wine
This document covers standards and guidelines on writing PKGBUILDs for Go.
General guidelines
Package naming
Use go-modulename
if the package provides a program that is strongly coupled to the Go ecosystem. For other applications, use only the program name.
Building
Dependencies
Go 1.11 introduced the initial support for go modules. This allows Go upstream code to declare dependencies and pin them to the given project version. Currently our packaging efforts utilize this to vendor dependencies.
Upstream project without go modules
For upstream code that does not utilise Go modules, the following workaround exists. Consider filing an issue upstream.
PKGBUILD
url=https://github.com/upstream_user/upstream_project prepare() { cd "$pkgname-$pkgver" go mod init "${url#https://}" # strip https:// from canonical URL go mod tidy }
Flags and build options
Most Makefiles written for go applications do not respect the build flags provided by build systems along with overwriting GOFLAGS
, this causes Go binaries to not be compiled with RELRO as we need CGO_CFLAGS
and CGO_LDFLAGS
to be set for the compiler. This needs to be patched into the Makefile, or the Makefile should be omitted.
export CGO_CPPFLAGS="${CPPFLAGS}" export CGO_CFLAGS="${CFLAGS}" export CGO_CXXFLAGS="${CXXFLAGS}" export CGO_LDFLAGS="${LDFLAGS}" export GOFLAGS="-buildmode=pie -trimpath -ldflags=-linkmode=external -mod=readonly -modcacherw" # or alternatively you can define some of these flags from the CLI options go build \ -trimpath \ -buildmode=pie \ -mod=readonly \ -modcacherw \ -ldflags "-linkmode external -extldflags \"${LDFLAGS}\"" \ .
Flag meaning
-buildmode=pie
enables PIE compilation for binary harderning.-trimpath
important for reproducible builds so full build paths and module paths are not embedded.-mod=readonly
ensure the module files are not updated in any go actions.-modcacherw
is not important, but it ensures that go modules creates a write-able path. Default is read-only.
vendor
directory with modules.txt
, the -mod
flag can safely be changed to -mod=vendor
.Makefile
if there is one.Supporting debug packages
Enabling debug packages with source listing and proper symbol look ups require a few modifications to the default buildflags.
- Removal of
-trimpath
to ensure source paths are rewritten in the binary - Include
-compressdwarf=false
in-ldflags
to ensure we can parse the DWARF headers as current tooling does not support compressed headers. - Ensure
-linkmode=external
as the internal linker go uses does not embed a build-id into the binary. - Include
GOPATH="${srcdir}"
so makepkg can include the source code for all modules.
The above options should produce a debug package with proper detached symbols and source listings which can then be picked up by the debugger.
export CGO_CPPFLAGS="${CPPFLAGS}" export CGO_CFLAGS="${CFLAGS}" export CGO_CXXFLAGS="${CXXFLAGS}" export CGO_LDFLAGS="${LDFLAGS}" export GOPATH="${srcdir}" export GOFLAGS="-buildmode=pie -mod=readonly -modcacherw" go build -ldflags "-compressdwarf=false -linkmode external" .
Output directory
There are currently a few ways to build all go binaries in a project.
build(){ cd "$pkgname-$pkgver" go build -o output-binary . }
...
is a shorthand for the compiler to recursively descend into the directory and find all binaries. It can be used in conjunction with a output directory to build everything.
prepare(){ cd "$pkgname-$pkgver" mkdir -p build } build(){ cd "$pkgname-$pkgver" go build -o build ./cmd/... }
Sample PKGBUILD
pkgname=foo pkgver=0.0.1 pkgrel=1 pkgdesc='Go PKGBUILD Example' arch=('x86_64') url="https://example.org/$pkgname" license=('GPL') makedepends=('go') source=("$url/$pkgname-$pkgver.tar.gz") sha256sums=('1337deadbeef') prepare(){ cd "$pkgname-$pkgver" mkdir -p build/ } build() { cd "$pkgname-$pkgver" export CGO_CPPFLAGS="${CPPFLAGS}" export CGO_CFLAGS="${CFLAGS}" export CGO_CXXFLAGS="${CXXFLAGS}" export CGO_LDFLAGS="${LDFLAGS}" export GOFLAGS="-buildmode=pie -trimpath -ldflags=-linkmode=external -mod=readonly -modcacherw" go build -o build ./cmd/... } check() { cd "$pkgname-$pkgver" go test ./... } package() { cd "$pkgname-$pkgver" install -Dm755 build/$pkgname "$pkgdir"/usr/bin/$pkgname }