Are Golang binaries portable?

go cross-platform binaryfiles computer-architecture
cat picture cat · Nov 23, 2015 · Viewed 13k times · Source

Suppose I'm a primarily Linux user, but I'm developing an application in Go that I want to be cross platform. I've searched around, but I can't seem to find information to absolve the following:

  1. If I go install a binary on my amd64 Ubuntu system, will it also work on anyone else's 64-bit Ubuntu/Debian system?
  2. How can I use go install to build an x86_64 binary that will also run out-of-the-box on 32-bit Debianlikes?
  3. If I must use Windows to make a binary which will run on Windows, how can I also ensure that even if my Windows system is 64-bit the executable will be built for x86_64?

My questions in effect boil down to, "how static/portable is go's linker/compiler?"

Answer

joshlf picture joshlf · Nov 23, 2015
  1. Yes it will; this is true of basically all binaries compiled for 64-bit Linux, not just those written in Go (except for shared libraries, which Go doesn't rely on)
  2. You can set the GOOS and GOARCH environment variables before building: GOOS=windows GOARCH=386 go build (or go install or whatever), etc
  3. By default a binary will be built for the system you're running, but this isn't necessary - see 2

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